Brett because he made you feel so silly when you talked to him?"

Helena flushed, still sensitive to ridicule. "I want to marry Mr.

Brett," she said with dignity, "because he is clever, and being a fool, I admire cleverness more than anything in the whole world, and I believe _he'd_ let me expand."

"Do you mean I have kept you back?" asked her mother, in low, earnest tones. She had accused herself.

"No, you've been splendid." Helena patted her hand. "No girl ever had such a good mother.... And now you are going to be good about this too, and not be troublesome and try to keep me here!" She jumped up and stood facing her, excitement and expectancy.

Mrs. Hallam was suddenly conscious of her weakness.

It had been so easy to be strong when she was dealing with a child--and she had kept Helena a child. Now, in this moment, she realised that she was dealing with a woman, a woman of a stronger will. Something, Mr. Brett perhaps, had altered Helena. Even her way of talking had changed in an instant.

"Expand" and "troublesome"----! She looked up and saw before her no longer an obedient child, but a girl almost bursting with the desire to live at nearly any cost.

Mrs. Hallam was naturally alarmed. She knew that any contest of the wills was useless. She fell back upon pathos.

"Helena dear," she said weakly, "you're twenty now. I don't want to dictate to you, to treat you as a child. You have the right, as you say, to live your own life. But do you think it right," and now her voice grew very feeble, very plaintive, "after I've done all I have for you, not to think of me at all?"

"What do you mean?" asked Helena with quite an emphasis upon the second word. She felt a dim mistrust of this new tone. She had been kindlier to opposition, for indeed at the moment she almost longed to fight.

Mrs. Hallam, anxious to explain, to justify once and for all, began again at the beginning.

"All these years, dear child, though you did not, could not of course guess it, I've been moulding you according to a theory of my own; not a new theory but what is far better, one that has stood the test of centuries. I wanted to form your character, your will, before you were brought face to face with life. That process is not quite complete yet, although you seem to think it is." She spoke the last words rather bitterly, then with a sudden change to gentleness, went on, "But even if it had been, do you think that when I've given up the best years of my life to you, it is fair for you to dash away, leaving me alone, and not to give me the reward of spending a few pleasant years with the dear child I have helped to form?"

She smiled lovingly, but Helena looked coldly back at her. It was the other's point of view, to her, which was not fair.

"I don't see that," she answered almost fiercely, surprised at her own words, oddly unlike herself of one hour ago and many years before.

"_That's_ not living your own life a bit. _You_ didn't give those best years of your life to your mother. I shall often see you, and I expect you did yours. You gave the best years of your life to your daughter, you say, and I want to give my best years to mine."

Mrs. Hallam loathed excitement, thinking it bad form; but now she raised her voice. "My dear!" she cried. "Where did you get these most extraordinary notions? Was it from this Mr. Brett?"

"You said you liked all his ideas so much," laughed Helena, "and yet you're shocked because I want to marry him!"

"There is a difference, dear," retorted Mrs. Hallam, her calmness regained, "between liking a man's ideas and caring for him as a son-in-law."

Helena, however, in her new mood wanted something more direct than generalities. "What have you got against him then?" she flashed.

Mrs. Hallam spread her thin hands soothingly. "Nothing, dear, absolutely nothing. Do not let us have a scene. I thought him a charming man; possibly rather self-centred, but clever, cultured, and with, I am sure, good motives. I feel certain he will do extremely well. If you had wished to marry him in five years--but at twenty----!" She spoke as though it were fourteen.

"Well," remarked Helena slowly, as though reviewing the whole situation from impartial ground, "I suppose the wedding won't be to-morrow.

Don't you usually wait a bit?"

Her mother noticed that there was no hypothesis--no "wouldn't be"--about it. She saw no good in a conflict. The girl was twenty, the man probably twelve or more years older; there was nothing, she almost regretfully admitted, to be said against him; they had seemed good chums. Most mothers would have been delighted, for he was making himself a name as a novelist. Yet she was not, for he had come with this preposterously worded letter to wreck all her plans. She had thought him so safe, from the mere fact that he had no romance or sentiment about him. He was so safe, yes, for Helena; a real platonic friendship; opening her eyes a little to the bigger world outside, but altogether to be trusted not to put ridiculous ideas into her head. He was the first man with whom she had ever trusted Helena at all alone, and now----!

"Mother," laughed Helena, suddenly clasping her fondly round the neck, "I can see from your cross face you _do_ mean to be troublesome! Now just be good instead and say that we may be at any rate engaged? It will be such fun, and we can see then how we feel about it."

Mrs. Hallam by now knew with all certainty that she was weak. She felt a vague sense of relief that Helena had asked permission; at one moment she had not expected that.... If she refused it, what would be the end? Possibly elopement, suicide, or some other of those awful means that modern girls employed so freely.... Whereas if she said yes, she still retained her grip as mother and might use what authority she had to disillusion slowly this girl, who looked on her engagement as mere fun.

"Very well, my own dear daughter," she said and suddenly found herself crying.

To Helena also things had turned out otherwise than she expected. She had not ever thought that she would get her mother's leave. For one moment it was almost a shock! She felt suddenly thrust out beyond recall upon a journey all mysterious to her. She was not sure, now, that she ever meant to do more than a.s.sert her right to do just as she wanted.

Did she want to marry Hubert Brett? She was not really sure.

She wanted certainly to get away from Home....

Five more years of this--that was what her mother hinted at--five more years of being ignorant, of seeing no one, knowing nothing about anything that mattered, being just your mother's daughter--five more wasted years!...

So that, after having dried her mother's tears and told her, very truly, how much she had always and would always love her, she hurried upstairs to her writing-desk with quite a new sensation of life being a most vital and palpitating thing. Her days had been all terribly alike: this was so different and thrilling!

The only thing was--how did one begin?

She wished she had asked Mother. She couldn't very well go down and ask her now. Besides, she might just change her mind.

"Mr." looked so stiff like that; yet she did not like, quite, to call him Hubert yet.

She gave a little laugh of excitement. What fun it all was! She wondered if other people felt like this, when they were getting married. They probably knew all about it?

Oh yes, of course; she'd go by his letter....

But no; because when _he_ wrote they were not engaged!

So finally she thought it best to leave a blank and start straight off--

"I really don't know at all what I ought to say. I am no good at letters and this is very difficult, but I too enjoyed all our walks and things, and if you really want to marry me I don't see why we shouldn't be engaged. I liked you very much down here and hope I shall make you happy. Mother doesn't seem very keen about it, I think she thinks I am too young though I am twenty, but she has given her consent and will, I am sure, come round to it, so don't worry.

"I'm afraid you'll think this letter very stupid, but you know how ashamed I always was of my ignorance. I seem to know nothing! It is very nice indeed of any one like you to care for me.

"Yours, "HELENA HALLAM.

"P.S.--You won't be able to tease me any more about my name, afterwards!"

Perhaps to any real anthologist or expert of love-letters this would seem but little better than the attempt it answered; yet if success must be judged by results, it cannot have been much amiss, since for the first time in his life Hubert Brett was melted to a display of ridiculous emotion. "Dear little girl!" he murmured aloud and kissed the last words before her signature.

As for Helena, having run out to the village and posted the letter unread by her mother--a cause of yet further misgiving to the theorist--she began to wonder ever so little whether she had done quite wisely.

From somewhere (who can say whence, since some things are inborn in Man?) she had got the notion, possibly ridiculous, that courting and proposals were quite different from this. Even in the Lives and comic papers men knelt and that sort of thing. She felt she had been cheated rather of Romance.

As things were, with her so ignorant and Mother like that, it was all a little of a worry.

But it was also a way out....

CHAPTER IV