Armstrong and Miss Thayer a.s.similated their lessons in the same way as I had done; but we all failed to recognize in this dear lady the natural expression--the personification--of all that we ourselves had labored so a.s.siduously to acquire."

Both Helen and Uncle Peabody were listening to the old man's words with breathless attention.

"You mean that Mrs. Armstrong is a natural humanist?" Uncle Peabody queried.

"The most perfect expression of all that humanism contains which I can ever hope to see," Cerini replied, with feeling. "I, more than any one, have prevented the expression of these attributes which are your natural heritage; now let me help to merge them with your husband's undoubted talents."

"You cannot mean it," Helen said, weakly, sobering down after the first exhilaration of the old man's words. "I am no humanist, either natural or otherwise. Monsignor Cerini evidently means to give me a new confidence, but it is a mistaken kindness."

"You must listen to what he says, Helen," Uncle Peabody insisted. "I have known Cerini for many years, and he would make no such statement unless he felt it to be true."

"It is all as unknown to me as some foreign language I have never heard before," she protested. "I know, for I have tried to understand."

"Does a bird have to know the technique of music before it can sing?"

asked Cerini, quietly.

"Oh, this is agony for me!" cried Helen, in despair. "I can only see in it another opening of the wound, another barb later to be torn from my heart."

"Be reasonable, child," urged Uncle Peabody, soothingly. "It seems to me that instead of all this Cerini has brought to you--to all of us--the solution of our problem. Let me ask him a few questions, while you control yourself and try to understand."

Helen acquiesced silently. Cerini's words had seemed to give her hope, yet she dared not allow herself to hope again. Limp from exhaustion, worn out by her ceaseless mental struggle, she had no strength even to oppose.

"Mrs. Armstrong has taken her present position," began Uncle Peabody, "because she feels absolutely that her husband's real expression of himself is that which he has shown her while under the influence of this spell which his love of the old-time learning has woven about him."

"She is right," replied the librarian, "except that by an unusual combination of circ.u.mstances this influence overpowered him by its strength, and he should not be held wholly responsible for his abnormal acts. This is not the first time I have seen this happen. There is a peculiar languor in the atmosphere, here in Florence, impregnated as it is with the romance of centuries, which is absolutely intoxicating to the mind, but it is rarely that it succeeds in making itself so felt upon an Anglo-Saxon temperament. Mr. Armstrong ought never, for the sake of his own individuality, to give up his fondness for the _literae humaniores_, but it is entirely out of the question for him ever again to become so subject to their control."

"She senses this quite as strongly as you do; but beyond this she feels that he can never retain the development which has come to him here except in an atmosphere filled with a comprehension of all which he holds so dear."

"Mrs. Armstrong is still in the right," a.s.sented Cerini, gravely; "but there is one point which she still fails to understand. Her husband's work has been humanistic, but he himself is but just ready to begin to be a humanist. She is the one best fitted in every way to join him at this point, and their two personalities, thus united, can but produce splendid results."

"I cannot believe it," Helen interrupted, speaking with decision. "It has been from Inez and not from me that he has received his inspiration.

Things are no different now from what they have been: Inez is still the one to inspire him to attain his best."

"You are wrong, dear," spoke a low voice behind them, as Inez threw her arms about Helen and embraced her warmly. "I surmised what you were discussing, and took this first opportunity to do my part toward straightening things out."

Helen sat upright and looked steadily into Inez' smiling face, completely freed for the first time in many weeks from its care-worn expression.

"You--you could not look like that if you understood," she stammered, still startled by her friend's sudden appearance.

"Mr. Armstrong and I have talked it all over, and at last I understand what should have been clear to me long ago. You are a dear, brave girl, Helen, and deserve all the happiness which is in store for you."

"Happiness--to me! Oh, Inez," Helen cried, "why do you all mock me with that word? There can be no happiness for me, and, unless I do what I propose, it means misery for every one instead of for me alone."

"No, dear," Inez replied, softly, gently smoothing Helen's hair as she rested her tired head upon her shoulder. "No--there can be nothing but happiness, now that all is understood."

"But you--you love Jack, Inez."

The girl colored as Helen spoke thus freely in the presence of others, but her voice was firm as she replied.

"Helen, dear," she said, "here in the presence of Mr. Cartwright and Monsignor Cerini I ask your permission to keep in my heart the image of the man I learned to love while we both were beneath the spell. That man no longer exists in the flesh, but I still worship his memory. He can never exist again except as a part of an experience which could never be repeated. Is this asking too much, dear?"

"What does it all mean?" cried Helen, gazing at her helplessly--"what does it all mean?"

"It means that there have been two Jacks, Helen--one of whom became transformed for a time into a veritable master-spirit of the past. To this man, I admit, I gave a devotion which I shall never--could never--give to any other; but he died, Helen, when the spell broke against that wall at the foot of the hill of Settignano. This man, even during his existence, gave me no devotion in return, and knew not the pa.s.sion which he inspired in me. He had no heart, but it was not his heart I worshipped. To me his mind--broad, comprehensive, and understanding--stood for all that life could give. The other Jack--the man you married--has never wavered in the love he gave you from the first. He has suffered from the influence of the second personality in that he was forced into the background by the greater strength of this sub-conscious self; but he has also gained from its influence in the development which we all have seen. My Jack is dead, but yours still lives. He needs you, and he longs for the return to him of the wife he has always loved."

Inez paused after her long appeal, eager to read a favorable response in the pale face still gazing at her, but no change came over the set features. Once or twice Helen started to speak, but no words came. Uncle Peabody and Cerini had followed Inez intently, realizing that she was pleading the cause far better than they could. Affected by the scene before them, they found themselves unable to break the silence. At last Helen's voice came back to her.

"He longs for the return to him of the wife he has always loved?"

She repeated Inez' words slowly, in the form of a question.

"Yes, dear," her friend replied; "he is waiting for you now."

"Oh no, no, no!" Helen cried, brokenly, covering her face with her hands; "it is all a mistake. You are all doing this for my sake, and it is not the truth--it is not the truth!"

"You are ill, Helen!" cried Inez, alarmed by her appearance as well as by the wildness of her words; "come, let me take you to your room."

Unresistingly Helen suffered herself to be led into the house, leaving Uncle Peabody and Cerini looking apprehensively at each other.

"He longs--for the return to him--of the wife--he has always loved,"

Helen murmured over and over again, as Inez and Annetta undressed her and gently put her into bed. She seemed indifferent to what Inez said to her, and conscious only of the words which she kept repeating.

Thoroughly frightened, Inez left her in Annetta's care while she rushed down-stairs to summon the doctor.

x.x.xII

For a few days Helen's condition was grave enough to warrant the anxiety which pervaded the entire household. Dr. Montgomery was again pressed into service, and found his skill taxed to the utmost to meet the condition in which he found his new patient.

"This is a great surprise to me," he remarked to Uncle Peabody, shaking his head ominously. "I have made it a point to watch Mrs. Armstrong throughout the shock and the strain of her husband's accident, antic.i.p.ating that this nervous reaction might occur; but the time when it would naturally have happened is now long since pa.s.sed."

Mr. Cartwright reluctantly explained to the doctor enough of the facts to a.s.sist him to a proper understanding of the case, and with sympathies fully enlisted his efforts were redoubled. The patient herself proved to be his greatest obstacle. Try as he would, he could not arouse in her any interest in her recovery. She accepted his services and those of the nurse without question, but in an apathetic manner. Armstrong, Inez, and Uncle Peabody hovered about the sick-chamber, eagerly grasping such information as the nurse and the doctor were able to give them, the anxious lines in their faces becoming deeper as the hours pa.s.sed by.

But it was naturally upon Armstrong that the burden rested most heavily. He had been given the fullest details of the conference in the garden which immediately preceded Helen's collapse, and her replies to Cerini's appeal showed him, better even than his last conversation with her, how seriously she had been affected. For this he alone was responsible, and he was equally responsible for the illness which came as a final result of it all. He had hoped that when Cerini awakened her to a knowledge of her own splendid development she would accept his plea that they take up their new life together, but this expectation had been in vain.

"It has come too late," he said, bitterly, to Uncle Peabody. "We can only imagine the tortures through which the poor girl has pa.s.sed by the severity of this reaction. She has been forcing herself to make this supreme sacrifice, which she believes is necessary, and has succeeded at last in destroying that love which I know she felt for me even through the worst of the crisis."

"She loves you still, Jack," replied Uncle Peabody, whose complete sympathy had been won by Armstrong's att.i.tude during the trying days they were pa.s.sing through together. "It is this which has made it so hard for her."

"It is only your ever-present optimism," the younger man replied, sadly.

"Now that I see myself as I have really been during these past weeks, I cannot share it with you, much as I wish I could. If I, having actually experienced this spell and knowing its force, find it so impossible to explain to myself this long series of inexplicable events, how can I expect anything other than this generous but unfortunate conviction that her self-sacrifice is necessary?"

His face contracted as he spoke, and the veins upon his forehead stood out boldly against the fair skin, still colorless from his prolonged illness.

"And the worst of it all is that I can make no sacrifice which can possibly accomplish anything," he continued. "She--she must suffer on indefinitely for my selfishness, for my neglect."

"Let me speak to her just once more," Inez pleaded, in real pity for the man beside her. "When she is strong enough, perhaps I can make her understand."