Yet stay! Was there no justice due to him? That
letter which had been read long before the intended time, whose delivery
any accident might have frustrated, whose writer might have recalled it,
--did it demand no magnanimity of reply on her part? Had he now no claim
to the truth from her? As she knew what he never would have told her an
hour later, had she a right to recede from the position she had taken in
response, simply because she could and he could not? Should she ignobly
refuse him his right?
Whether this were a sophism of sin or the logic of highest virtue, she,
who would have blotted out her writing with her heart's blood, did not
wait to weigh.
"To him, also, I owe a duty!" she exclaimed, dropped the letter where
she had found it, and fled,--fled, hurrying through all the bewildering
garden-walks, down from the fragrance, the serenity, the bowery
seclusion, from all this conspiring loveliness that tempted her to dally
and commanded her to stay,--fled from this dream of passion, this region
of joy,--fled forever, as she thought, out into the wide, chill, lonely
night.
Pushing off the boat and springing in, once more the water curled
beneath the parting prow, and she shot with her flashing sail and
hissing wake heedlessly, like a phantom, past another boat that was
making more slowly in to shore.
"This way, Helen," murmurs a subdued voice. "There are some steps, Mr.
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