"Forgive me if I offend you, but this is not a matter which you or I can settle. It is perhaps natural that I cannot understand your viewpoint.

The nature of my life and work gives me little knowledge of women; but this is not a question of s.e.x--it is the kinship of intellects. You are his wife, and, as you say, it is your privilege to share with your husband any development, but it must be along a path which you are able to tread. I mean this in no unkind way, my daughter. I doubt not that you, perhaps, in all other ways, are quite capable of doing so, but this one single portion of his life it is quite impossible that you should share."

Helen had no response. Her heart told her that all Cerini said was literally true. She felt herself to be absolutely unfitted to understand or to supplement that particular expression of her husband's character.

But the matter-of-fact suggestion of the librarian that Inez should fulfil to him that which she, his wife, lacked, almost paralyzed her power to think or speak. Cerini seemed instinctively to read what was pa.s.sing through her mind.

"You think me unreal, my daughter--you think me impractical. I may be both. Here, within these old walls, I am not limited by the world's conventions, so perhaps I disregard them more than is right. Those whom I love signify nothing to me as to their personal appearance or their families or their personalities except in so far as these attributes may be expressions of themselves. Life to me would not be worth the living if in debating whether or not I ought to do a certain thing I was obliged to consider also what the world would think or what some other person might think. Let me ask you a question: Was your motive in coming here this morning the result of a desire to put yourself in touch with the spirit of your husband's work, or was it to separate these two persons in the labor they have undertaken?"

Cerini's question brought Helen to herself.

"If you are really free from the world's conventions," she responded, quickly, "you will understand my answer. My husband is everything to me that a wife could ask, and his happiness is the highest object my life contains. Miss Thayer is the dearest friend I have, and my affection for her is second only to the love I bear my husband. While this side of his nature was not unknown to me, until we came to Florence--even until to-day--I have never fully appreciated its intensity. Yet when I feel that to a certain extent, at least, his welfare depends upon a gratification of this expression, is it unnatural that I, his wife, should wish to be the one person to experience that development with him?"

"You did not feel this strong desire when you first came to Florence?"

"I did not understand it."

"Would your present comprehension have come at all if his companion had been a man rather than a woman?"

Helen flushed. "You are not so free from the world's conventions as you think."

"But you do not answer the question," the old man pursued, relentlessly.

"You think, then, that my desire is prompted by jealousy? Let us speak frankly," continued Helen as Cerini held up his hand deprecatingly. "The distinction in my own mind may be a fine one and difficult for another to comprehend, but I can say truly that no jealous thought has entered into any of my considerations. I could not love my husband and be jealous of him at the same time. On the other hand, it is probably quite true that were his companion a man I should not have recognized so strongly the importance of joining him in this particular work."

Cerini rose quietly, and took from the bookcase near his desk a copy of a modern cla.s.sic.

"The author has expressed an idea here which I think explains your position exactly." He turned the pages quickly. "See here," he said, drawing closer to Helen and pointing to a paragraph marked with a double score in the margin. "'No man objects to the admiration his wife receives from his friends; it is the woman herself who makes the trouble.' Now I suppose the reverse of that proposition is equally true."

Helen smiled. "You mean that the reason I am not jealous of my husband in this instance is because he has given me no occasion?"

"Exactly."

"That is perfectly true."

"But you fear that it may not always be true?"

Helen was no match for the old man in argument, yet she struggled to meet him.

"Perhaps," she said; "there is always that danger. Why not avoid it by making this other companionship unnecessary?"

"But suppose you yourself are not temperamentally fitted to gratify this particular craving in your husband's life?" Cerini watched the effect of his words upon his companion. She was silent for several moments before she raised her eyes to his.

"I know that you are right," she answered, simply. "I have felt it always, but my husband has insisted that in my case it was lack of application rather than of temperament. I came here to-day to try the experiment, and you have shown me that my own judgment is correct."

"It is correct," agreed Cerini, delighted by Helen's unexpected acquiescence. "It was your husband's heart rather than his head which led him astray in his advice. You have just shown me your intelligence by coming so promptly to this conclusion; now you are going to manifest your devotion to him by leaving him undisturbed in this work which he has undertaken. It can only last during a limited period at best. It is the expression of but one side of his nature. Before many weeks have pa.s.sed you and he will be returning to your great country into a complexity of conditions where this experience will become only a memory. These conditions will call to the surface the expression of his other characteristics into which you can fully enter. By not interfering with this character-building now going on, you, his wife, will later reap rich returns."

A tap sounded on the door of the study.

"There is your husband now," said Cerini, taking Helen's hand. "Tell me that you forgive me for my frankness."

Helen pressed his hand silently as he turned from her to admit Armstrong.

"Here you are!" cried Jack, as he entered with Inez. "We became so engrossed that I am ashamed to say I completely forgot our new convert."

"Your forgetfulness has given me the opportunity to become well acquainted with your charming wife," replied Cerini. "Is your work completed for the day?"

"Yes, but we shall be at it again to-morrow. You will come with us of course?" he asked, turning to his wife.

"I am not quite sure, Jack," Helen replied. "Monsignor Cerini has suggested to me another way in which I can help you, which may prove to be equally important."

She turned to Inez with an unflinching smile. "Our friend has been explaining to me the nature of what you and Jack are doing together. You must certainly plan to stay on for a while longer. I am sure Jack could never finish it without you."

IX

The human heart can play no more difficult role than to keep on with its every-day monotonous pulsations, so far as the world sees, when in reality every throb is a measured duration of infinite pain. Ten days had pa.s.sed since De Peyster had so unconsciously been the cause of completely changing the even tenor of Helen's existence, and during this time she had drifted helplessly in the deep waters of uncertainty. What was the wise thing to do? Helen knew Inez too well to deceive herself into thinking that what was said to Ferdinand had been simply an expedient to accomplish his dismissal, and her observations since then had confirmed her early convictions. Inez was in love with Jack. Jack was obviously fond of her companionship. Their work in the library had brought them constantly together, and at home an increasing proportion of the time had been devoted to a consideration and discussion of the various topics which had developed and into which Helen did not enter.

Yet there was nothing in all this which was not perfectly natural; in fact, it was, as Helen said to herself, wholly the outcome of what she had originally suggested.

Helen's convictions regarding Inez were confirmed, not by what her friend did, but rather by the efforts she made to avoid doing certain things. Never for an instant did Helen question Inez' loyalty to her, and she could scarcely refrain from entering into the tremendous struggle in which she saw her engaged. Each woman's heart was pa.s.sing through fire, and Helen felt a new and strange bond of sympathy between her friend and herself because of their mutual suffering. But the struggle must continue. Helen must come to some decision wiser than any which had yet suggested itself to her before disclosing to any one, and to Inez least of all, that she possessed any knowledge of the situation.

Fortunately, at this crisis, the automobile became the controlling excitement. During the intervening days Jack had resisted the temptation, devoting himself a.s.siduously to his self-appointed task, and satisfying himself with short excursions after his labors at the library were over. Now he could resist no longer. The book was a.s.suming definite proportions, and, as he explained to himself and the others, the work would be all the better for a little holiday. So it was that the Armstrongs, with Miss Thayer and Uncle Peabody, made runs to Siena, Padua, and to all the smaller towns less frequented by visitors and consequently of greater interest. Miss Thayer forgot in the excitement the experience she was pa.s.sing through; Uncle Peabody forgot Luigi Cornaro and the j.a.panese; Armstrong, for the time being, appeared indifferent to the hitherto compelling interests at the library; and Helen, at intervals, forgot her suffering and the heavy burden which lay upon her heart in her feeling of helplessness. New sensations, in this twentieth century, are rare, and the automobile is to be credited with supplying many. The exhilaration, the abandon, which comes with the utter annihilation of time and s.p.a.ce, forces even those affairs of life which previously had been thought important to become miserably commonplace. The danger itself is not the least of the fascination.

"I would rather be killed once a week in an automobile," a.s.serted Uncle Peabody while the fever was on him, "than die the one ordinary death allotted to man."

With the temporary cessation of the library work, there had been no occasion for separate interests. This, Helen felt, was most fortunate, as it gave her ample opportunity to arrive at her conclusions. It was all her own fault, she repeated to herself over and over again. Had she made an earlier effort to enter into Jack's interests, even though it had proved her inability, matters need never have arrived at so serious a pa.s.s. Now she was convinced that it was too late to become a part of them; she had done an irreparable injury to Inez, whom she loved as a sister, and had taken chances on disrupting her own and her husband's domestic happiness.

"As Jack said, I have found a cloud in the cloudless sky," she thought.--"And poor Inez!"

Thus the burden resolved itself into two parts--solicitude for Inez and how best to undo the harm Helen felt she had wrought. Her first attempt had proved a failure, and she could not see the next step. While the motoring fever lasted there was nothing to do but to plan; for the excitement was infectious, and one trip followed another in rapid succession. Household regularity became conspicuous by its absence.

Meals were served at all hours and were rushed through with reckless haste, entirely upsetting Uncle Peabody's theories.

"You treat your stomach like a trunk," he protested to Armstrong one morning, "and you throw the food into it just about the way an average man does his packing."

"But you finish your breakfast just as soon as any of us," was the retort.

"Yes, but if you observe carefully you will note that I actually eat about one-quarter as much as you do in the same given time. And what I have eaten will satisfy me about four times as long, because I have thoroughly masticated it and a.s.similated all the nourishing portions of the food. When I think of the gymnastic performances your poor stomach must go through in order to tear into shreds the chunks of food you have bolted down I admit my sympathy is fully aroused."

"Sympathy is always grateful," Armstrong replied, unconvinced, "but every moment we lose discussing nutrition is a moment taken off the finest trip we have tried yet. The car is in splendid condition, the weather is ideal, and Pisa awaits us at the other end of our excursion."

"So it is to be Pisa, is it?" Uncle Peabody arose. "Do you know, Jack, I like you for the way you plan these charming rides, and that almost makes up for your lack of judgment in some other directions. An ordinary man would spend at least the day before in studying maps, asking advice, and in making plans generally. You, on the contrary, wait until breakfast is over, throw down your napkin, and then with a proper show of impatience say, 'Why do you keep me waiting? The car is ready to take us to the moon.' All this fits in exactly with my principles: it is the unexpected which always brings satisfaction."

"Uncle's praise is distinctly a man's approval," Helen protested. "From a woman's standpoint Jack's methods represent the acme of tyranny. No inquiries as to where we prefer to be spirited, no suggestions that our opinions are worth consulting, no suspicion that we are other than clay in the potter's hands; simply, 'The machine is ready. Please hurry.'

Yes, we are coming," Helen hurriedly added, seeing Jack's impatience over the bantering, "we are coming!"

Giuseppe, Annetta, and the cook were avowed enemies of the motor-car, not only because of the effect it had produced upon the household arrangements, but also because of the intrusion of the French chauffeur which it had forced upon them. They would die rather than show the slightest interest in it, yet on one pretext or another they never allowed the machine to start out without regarding it with secret admiration and respect. Giuseppe, on this particular morning, was gathering roses on the terrace, Annetta was closing a shutter on the veranda, while the cook's red face peered around the corner of the villa. Giuseppe crossed himself as the engine started up, then jumped and fell squarely into his rose-basket as the chauffeur maliciously pressed the bulb, and the machine moved majestically past him, out of the court-yard, and into the narrow road.

"I don't blame these people for resenting the invasion of motor-cars and other evidences of modern progress," said Inez as they reached the level; "it is all so out of keeping with everything around them and with everything they have been brought up to regard as right and proper."