His tardy love and pride in the
young girl he had married had re-
mained upon the surface of a nature
long settled into the formality of habit,
the coldness of continual good fortune.
But DOW as he sat there alone in silence,
a strange suffering rent and shook him.
He dropped his pen and covered his
face with his hands. Dreams of a youth
long passed, his memory gave them up
reluctantly, his own thwarted fancies
and ideals and long forgotten sorrows
and joys, moved before him in the still-
ness, rising again at this vision of a
love, which was not for him. The
sweetness of her nature, never wholly
known till now, which he realized was
not stirred for him, smote him with a
bitter sense of longing and regret
Painful reluctant thoughts of the years

12



1/8 A SAWDUST DOLL.
which lay between himself and Helen,
clamored for recognition, and the re-
membrance of the solitary life she had
led among the formal, empty gayeties
to which he had abandoned her re-
proached him bitterly. Trying still to
maintain his attitude of angry con-
demnation of his wife against the flood
of sympathy which assailed him, there
came a moment when he found he
could no longer blame her. Alone,
delivered over to this strange conflict
with himself and his pride, his cold-
ness suddenly gave way, and grief and
love penetrated his heart, crusted with
the composure of years; entered and
filled it full.
He dropped his head in his hands.
"Too late," he groaned. "Too late."

But to Helen, sobbing alone in her

room, abandoned to her suffering, her

sorrow had never seemed so hopeless,

her solitude so deserted.
Chapter XIII.
