The doctor bowed as he acquiesced. "Your husband will require very little to be done for him for some days, Mrs. Armstrong," he said; "but if you prefer to stay near him your suggestion is better than mine."

"Did he speak again, doctor?" asked Helen.

"Yes," he replied, with a professional shrug; "but he said nothing. You must pay no attention to his ramblings. His mind will remain a blank until Nature supplies the connecting link. In the mean time he will require simply quiet and rest."

Uncle Peabody's stretcher was soon ready for service, and the still unconscious burden was gently lifted upon it and carried with utmost tenderness up the hill to the villa, where old Giuseppe and the maids received the party with unaffected joy at the good news that their master would survive the accident that had befallen him. With the aid of the trained nurse they found awaiting them, Armstrong was carefully transferred from the stretcher to his own bed, Inez was made comfortable in her room, and the doctor sat down upon the veranda with Helen and Uncle Peabody, who welcomed a moment's rest after the wearing experience of the past hour.

"Tell us the probabilities of the case, Dr. Montgomery," said Uncle Peabody. "Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong were planning to return to Boston soon, and now it will of course be necessary to rearrange their plans."

"Naturally," a.s.sented the doctor. "I will tell you all I can. These cases are somewhat uncertain, but the patient's delirium will surely last for several days. Then comes a slow period of convalescence, during which time the body repairs much more rapidly than the mind. You cannot count on less than two months, even with everything progressing favorably."

Uncle Peabody glanced over to where Helen was sitting.

"I don't care how long it takes," she replied to his implied interrogation, "so long as he gets well."

Dr. Montgomery smiled as he rose to take his leave. "My patient is evidently in good hands," he said. "The nurse will do all that needs to be done until I return in the course of an hour or two."

Helen and Uncle Peabody sat in silence for some moments after the doctor departed. There was nothing further to be done for the present, as both Jack and Inez were resting as comfortably as could be expected under the circ.u.mstances, and absolute quiet was the one thing needful.

"Well," said Uncle Peabody, at length, "it is the unexpected which has happened again."

"Yes," Helen a.s.sented without looking up; "if it keeps on happening with such startling regularity I shall begin to expect it, and then your theory will lose its point."

Uncle Peabody was in a thoughtful rather than an argumentative mood.

"If I was not afraid you would think me heartless, Helen, I would say that I believe I see the hand of Providence in this."

She looked up quickly.

"Of course, a.s.suming that Jack recovers," he hastened to add.

"I am afraid my philosophy is hardly equal to this test," Helen replied, unsympathetically. "I am supremely happy that the affair is not so serious as it seemed at first, but I can't see anything particularly providential in the injury poor Jack has sustained, nor in the suffering he must pa.s.s through at best."

"Is it not just possible that this long period of convalescence, which Dr. Montgomery says is inevitable, may bring him to himself again?"

Helen smiled sadly. "It was the work at the library which brought him to himself, uncle. A separation from those influences which so strongly affected him there may result in a return to the old self I knew before we came here; but that is not his real self."

"If he returns to that condition, no matter what brings it about, will it not simplify matters?"

"I can't see how," replied Helen, seriously. "If I had never known this new development in Jack's nature, I should of course be quite content to have him return to his former self; but having seen him as he really is, I could never accept any condition which allows him no development of his higher and stronger personality. It would not be fair either to him or to me."

Uncle Peabody regarded Helen curiously. "Let me make myself clearer," he said, with considerable emphasis. "Only this very morning you were discussing with me the final outcome of what appeared to be a domestic tragedy. Your husband was controlled by the spell of the old-time learning which had reached out from its antiquity to grasp a modern convert. You were convinced that Miss Thayer's sentiments toward your husband had developed into affection, and you stated in so many words that if Jack did not reciprocate this affection he really ought to do so, because she was the one woman in the world qualified by nature to be his wife. In the presence of this overwhelming condition you very generously planned--and I expressed to you how much I admired your spirit--to eliminate yourself, and to sacrifice your own happiness in order to enable your husband to accomplish his destiny."

"You are making sport of me--it is most unkind!" she cried, reproachfully.

"You know I wouldn't do that," insisted Uncle Peabody. "I am merely presenting a simple statement of the case in order to prove my original a.s.sertion. Please let me continue. Just as the crisis seems to be at hand this accident occurs. In a most unexpected manner Jack is instantly divorced from the influences which have drawn him away from you. The break between him and Miss Thayer has been accomplished naturally, and he has been placed in his wife's hands to be nursed back to health--during which experience you both will come to know each other far better than ever before. Again I say--I believe I see the hand of Providence in the whole affair."

Helen waited to make quite sure that Uncle Peabody had finished. "I wonder if it is I who always see things differently," she said, "or if a man's viewpoint is of necessity different from a woman's. I love Jack more than I can ever express--and this accident has brought that devotion nearer to the surface than I have dared to let it come for many weeks. I have suffered in seeing him drawn away from me, and in realizing that I was becoming less and less essential to his life. Yet, through it all, I have understood. I have suffered to think that any other woman could be more to him than I am, but my love has not blinded my eyes to what I have actually seen. These are conditions which cannot be changed, even by this accident. Suppose it does separate him from all those influences which have brought about the crisis, as you call it; suppose that because of this separation, and the physical weakness through which he must pa.s.s, Jack turns to me as before, and for the time being believes that I am more to him than all else in the world--will this change the conditions themselves?"

"Do you mean that you would not accept this change in him?"

"I mean that I would not take advantage of it," replied Helen, firmly.

"I have seen the development which has taken place in Jack from the moment of our first meeting down to the present time. Even with the sorrow it has cost me I admire that development. Had I possessed equal possibilities, all would have been well. As I did not, it would be the act not of love but of tyranny to stand between him and his grander potentiality."

"But suppose that as Jack recovers he comes to a realization that his obsession has been a mistake--that your love and companionship really mean more to him than anything he can get elsewhere?"

"That would be a retrogression, after what I have seen him pa.s.s through.

As I just said, if I possessed the ability to rise to him, what you suggest might be a possibility; but I would never consent to have him a.s.sume a lower plane than that upon which he belongs simply that I may retain my claim."

Helen rose as she spoke and walked slowly down the veranda. Uncle Peabody watched her retreating figure, and studied her face as she returned and leaned against one of the pillars in silence.

"Why do you think it would force him to take a lower plane?" he asked, pointedly.

Helen turned abruptly and looked at him with an expression of frank surprise. "Why do I think so?" she repeated. "What a foolish question!"

"Still, I ask you for an answer," Uncle Peabody insisted.

"Because he is so far ahead of me in every way," Helen answered, simply.

"Suppose this is not true?"

"But it is."

"Why are you so positive?"

"Because it is quite apparent to every one--to Jack, to Cerini, and even to myself."

Uncle Peabody rose and stood beside her, taking her face between his hands and looking kindly into her eyes.

"You are not so far behind him as you think," he said, firmly.

"Whatever the distance between you may have been when you were first married, the trials I have seen you endure have wrought changes at least as great as those you have noticed in Jack. You are a brave, strong woman, Helen, and your development has been from within outward. I wish I could say as much for him."

"You are trying to give me courage, you dear old comforter," Helen replied, unconvinced but with a grateful smile.

"I am trying to show you yourself as you really are, my child," Uncle Peabody replied, "and to help you to recognize an act of Providence when one falls your way."

XXIV

Dr. Montgomery's approximate estimate of the duration of Armstrong's delirium proved to be only a few days shorter than the actual fact. In less than a week all anxiety regarding any possible complications was set at rest by the doctor's report that his patient was progressing normally and as well as could be expected. The skull had sustained no injury, and the brain suffered only from the concussion. The household became accustomed to the still figure, which gave evidence of its returning strength only by the increasing frequency of incoherent ramblings, the voice developing in firmness as the days progressed.

Inez was about again by this time, and with sunken eyes and ashen face shared with Helen the privilege of watching beside the patient during the last week of his unconsciousness. But it was a different Inez from the serious but happy and alert girl who had sat beside Armstrong in the automobile when it had crashed against the wall. The burden of bearing her secret alone, during all these weeks, had been in itself a wearing experience, but this was as nothing compared with the agony of soul through which she had since pa.s.sed. The very struggle with herself, and the sense of personal sacrifice she experienced, had previously served in her own mind to sanctify her affection and to justify its existence.

Now that she had allowed her pa.s.sion to burst from her control, all justification was at an end. Her womanhood and sense of right seemed to separate themselves from her weaker emotions, and to judge and condemn them without mitigation.

It was natural that Helen should attribute her changed condition to the horror of the accident itself; yet Inez knew that the scene which was enacted in her mind over and over again until it almost drove her mad was that of her own shameless disloyalty. She shuddered as it returned to her even now while sitting beside Armstrong's bed; she shrank from Helen's sympathetic caress and her thoughtful solicitude. If she could only cry out and proclaim to them all the unworthy part she had performed, she would feel some sense of relief in the self-abas.e.m.e.nt it must bring to her.