Norton lifted his hand brusquely:

"You ask the impossible. The conditions under which I am acting as your guardian seal my lips."

The girl looked at him steadily:

"Then, you are my real guardian?"

"Yes."

"And why have you not told me before?"

The question was asked with a firm emphasis that startled him into a sense of renewed danger.

"Why?" she repeated.

"To avoid questions I couldn't answer."

"You will answer them now?"

"With reservations."

The girl drew herself up with a movement of quiet determination and spoke in even tones:

"My parents are Southern?"

"Yes----"

"My father and mother were--were"--her voice failed, her head dropped and in an effort at self-control she walked to the table, took a book in her hand and tried to turn its leaves. The hideous question over which she had long brooded was too horrible to put into words. The answer he might give was too big with tragic possibilities. She tried to speak again and couldn't. He looked at her with a great pity in his heart and when at last she spoke her voice was scarcely a whisper:

"My father and mother were married?"

He knew it was coming and that he must answer, and yet hesitated. His reply was low, but it rang through her soul like the stroke of a great bell tolling for the dead:

"No!"

The book she held slipped from the trembling fingers and fell to the floor.

Norton walked to the window that he might not see the agony in her sensitive face.

She stood very still and the tears began slowly to steal down her cheeks.

"G.o.d pity me!" she sobbed, lifting her face and looking pathetically at Norton. "Why did you let them send me to school? Why teach me to think and feel and know this?"

The low, sweet tones of her wonderful voice found the inmost heart of the man. The misery and loneliness of the orphan years of which she had spoken were nothing to the anguish with which her being now shook.

He crossed the room quickly and extended his hand in a movement of instinctive sympathy and tenderness:

"Come, come, child--you're young and life is all before you."

"Yes, a life of shame and humiliation!"

"The world is wide to-day! A hundred careers are open to you. Marriage is impossible--yes----"

"And if I only wish for marriage?" the girl cried with pa.s.sionate intensity. "If my ideal is simple and old-fashioned--if all I ask of G.o.d is the love of one man--a home--a baby----"

A shadow of pain clouded Norton's face and he lifted a hand in tender warning:

"Put marriage out of your mind once and for all time! It can only bring to you and your loved ones hopeless misery."

Helen turned with a start:

"Even if the man I love should know all?"

"Yes," was the firm answer.

She gazed steadily into his eyes and asked with sharp rising emphasis:

"Why?"

The question brought him squarely to the last blow he must give if he accomplish the thing he had begun. He must tell her that her mother is a negress. He looked at the quivering figure, the white, sensitive, young face with the deep, serious eyes, and his lips refused to move. He tried to speak and his throat was dry. It was too cruel. There must be an easier way. He couldn't strike the sweet uplifted head.

He hesitated, stammered and said:

"I--I'm sorry--I can't answer that question fully and frankly. It may be best, but----"

"Yes, yes--it's best!" she urged.

"It may be best," he repeated, "but I simply can't do it"--he paused, turned away and suddenly wheeled confronting her:

"I'll tell you all that you need to know to-day--you were born under the shadow of a hopeless disgrace----"

The girl lifted her hand as if to ward a blow while she slowly repeated:

"A hopeless--disgrace----"

"Beneath a shadow so deep, no lover's vow can ever lift it from your life.

I should have told you this before, perhaps--well, somehow I couldn't"--he paused and his voice trembled--"I wanted you to grow in strength and character first----"

The girl clenched her hands and sprang in front of him:

"That my agony might be beyond endurance? Now you _must_ tell me the whole truth!"

Again the appealing uplifted face had invited the blow, and again his heart failed. It was impossible to crush her. It was too horrible. He spoke with firm decision:

"Not another word!"

He turned and walked rapidly to the door. The girl clung desperately to his arm:

"I beg of you! I implore you!"