The girl sprang back, and the blood rushed to her cheeks.  Half instinctively she drew her light dress more tightly about her; and the other saw the motion and stopped, a look of despair crossing his face.  The two stood thus for fully a minute, staring at each other wildly; then suddenly Arthur asked:  “You love this man whom you have married?  You love him?”

The girl answered, “Yes, I love him,” and Arthur’s arms dropped, and his head sank forward.  There was a look upon his face that tore Helen’s heart to see, so that for a moment or two she stood quite dazed with this new terror.  Then all at once, however, the old one came back to her thoughts, and with a faint cry she started toward her old friend, stretching out her arms to him and calling to him imploringly.

“Oh, Arthur,” she cried, “have mercy upon me—­do not frighten me any more!  Arthur, if you only knew what I have suffered, you would pity me, you could not help it!  You would not fling this burden of your misery upon me too.”

The man fixed his eyes upon her and for the first time he seemed to become aware of the new Helen, the Helen who had replaced the girl he had known.  He read in her ghastly white face some hint of what she had been through, and his own look turned quickly to one of wonder, and even awe.  “Helen,” he whispered, “are you ill?”

“No, Arthur,” she responded quickly, full of desperate hope as she saw his change.  “Not ill, but oh, so frightened.  I have been more wretched than you can ever dream.  Can you not help me, Arthur, will you not?  I was almost despairing, I thought that my heart would burst.  Can you not be unselfish?”

The man gazed at her at least a minute; and when he answered at last, it was in a low, grave voice that was new to her.

“I will do it, Helen,” he said.  “What is it?”

The girl came toward him, her voice sinking.  “We must not let him hear us, Arthur,” she whispered.  Then as she gazed into his face she added pathetically, “Oh, I cannot tell you how I have wished that I might only have someone to sympathize with me and help me!  I can tell everything to you, Arthur.”

“You are not happy with your husband?” asked the other, in a wondering tone, not able to guess what she meant.

“Happy!” echoed Helen.  “Arthur, he is ill, and I have been so terrified!  I feared that he was going to die; we have had such a dreadful sorrow.”  She paused for a moment, and gazed about her swiftly, and laying her finger upon her lips.  “He is asleep now,” she went on, “asleep for the first time in three nights, and I was afraid that we might waken him; we must not make a sound, for it is so dreadful.”

She stopped, and the other asked her what was the matter.  “It was three nights ago,” she continued, “and oh, we were so happy before it!  But there came a strange woman, a fearful creature, and she was drunk, and my husband found her and brought her home.  She was delirious, she died here in his arms, while there was no one to help her.  The dreadful thing was that David had known this woman when she was a girl—­”