Then, punishing herself very bravely and swallowing all her bitter shame, Helen went on to tell Mr. Howard of Arthur, and of her friendship with him, and of how long he had waited for her; she narrated in a few words how he had left her, and then how she had seen him upon the road.  Afterwards she stopped and sat very still, trembling, and with her eyes lowered, quite forgetting that she was driving.

“Miss Davis,” said the other, gently, seeing how she was suffering, “if you wish my advice about this, I should not worry myself too much; it is better, I find in my own soul’s life, to save most of the time that one spends upon remorse, and devote it to action.”

“To action?” asked Helen.

“Yes,” said the other.  “You have been very thoughtless, but you may hope that nothing irrevocable has happened; and when you have seen your friend and told him the truth just as you have told it to me, I fancy it will bring him joy enough to compensate him for what he has suffered.”

“That was what I meant to do,” the girl went on.  “But I have been terrified by all sorts of fancies, and when I remember how much pain I caused him, I scarcely dare think of speaking to him.  When I saw him by the roadside, Mr. Howard, he seemed to me to look exactly like you, there was such dreadful suffering written in his face.”

“A man who lives as you have told me your friend has lived,” said the other, “has usually a very great power of suffering; such a man builds for himself an ideal which gives him all his joy and his power, and makes his life a very glorious thing; but when anything happens to destroy his vision or to keep him from seeking it, he suffers with the same intensity that he rejoiced before.  The great hunger that was once the source of his power only tears him to pieces then, as steam wrecks a broken engine.”

“It’s very dreadful,” Helen said, “how thoughtless I was all along.  I only knew that he loved me very much, and that it was a vexation to me.”

Mr. Howard glanced at her.  “You do not love him?” he asked.

“No,” said Helen, quickly.  “If I had loved him, I could never have had a thought of all these other things.  But I had no wish to love anybody; it was more of my selfishness.”

“Perhaps not,” the other replied gently.  “Some day you may come to love him, Miss Davis.”

“I do not know,” Helen said.  “Arthur was very impatient.”

“When a man is swift and eager in all his life,” said Mr. Howard, smiling, “he cannot well be otherwise in his love.  Such devotion ought to be very precious to a woman, for such hearts are not easy to find in the world.”

Helen had turned and was gazing anxiously at Mr. Howard as he spoke to her thus.  “You really think,” she said, “that I should learn to appreciate Arthur’s love?”

“I cannot know much about him from the little you have told me,” was the other’s answer.  “But it seems to me that it is there you might find the best chance to become the unselfish woman that you wish to be.”