“Yes,” he replied after a moment, yet he sighed deeply in foreboding.

Tears came into her eyes, yet her voice did not falter as she continued:  “I said last night that you would understand me better than any one else; so I believe you will now.  You will sustain and strengthen me in what I believe to be duty.”

“Yes, Helen, up to the point of such endurance as I have.  One can’t go beyond that.”

“No, Hobart, but you will not fail me, nor let me fail.  I cannot marry Captain Nichol as he now is”—­there was an irrepressible flash of joy in his dark eyes—­“nor can I,” she added slowly and sadly, “marry you.”  He was about to speak, but she checked him and resumed.  “Listen patiently to me first.  I have thought and thought long hours, and I think I am right.  You, better than I, know Captain Nichol’s condition—­its sad contrast to his former noble self.  The man we once knew is veiled, hidden, lost—­how can we express it?  But he exists, and at any time may find and reveal himself.  No one, not even I, can revolt at what he is now as he will revolt at it all when his true consciousness returns.  He has met with an immeasurable misfortune.  He is infinitely worse off than if helpless—­worse off than if he were dead, if this condition is to last; but it may not last.  What would he think of me if I should desert him now and leave him nothing to remember but a condition of which he could only think with loathing?  I will hide nothing from you, Hobart, my brave, true friend—­you who have taught me what patience means.  If you had brought him back utterly helpless, yet his old self in mind, I could have loved him and married him, and you would have sustained me in that course.  Now I don’t know.  My future, in this respect, is hidden like his.  The shock I received last night, the revulsion of feeling which followed, leaves only one thing clear.  I must try to do what is right by him; it will not be easy.  I hope you will understand.  While I have the deepest pity that a woman can feel, I shrink from him now, for the contrast between his former self and his present is so terrible.  Oh, it is such a horrible mystery!  All Dr. Barnes’s explanations do not make it one bit less mysterious and dreadful.  Albert took the risk of this; he has suffered this for his country.  I must suffer for him; I must not desert him in his sad extremity.  I must not permit him to awake some day and learn from others what he now is, and that I, the woman he loved, of all others, left him to his degradation.  The consequences might be more fatal than the injury which so changed him.  Such action on my part might destroy him morally.  Now his old self is buried as truly as if he had died.  I could never look him in the face again if I left him to take his chances in life with no help from me, still less if I did that which he could scarcely forgive.  He could not understand all that has happened since we thought him dead.  He would only remember that I deserted him in his present pitiable plight.  Do you understand me, Hobart?”