stances-—she listened without a word. And when he asked her for help, for advice at least, she replied: "I can't help her. I couldn't help myself."
"Will you let me bring her to call on you? If you were to meet her"
She shook her head. "What is the use? I can do nothing for her. She will be better in Canada."
"You are very unjust to her," he said, hurt.
She did not reply. He nursed his resentment until, in a later scene, he caught her regarding him with a tragic dumb gaze that overcame him, like a memory of his mother's grief, with a strickening remorse; and when they met again, he said: "You asked me, once, not to judge you—and you're doing that now, when you shouldn't, when you don't understand. You don't know how it hurts me."
She brought her hand up, as if to brush back a straying hair from her forehead, shutting her eyes for the instant that her hand covered them. "No," she said; "it's you."
"How is it?" he argued. "What have I done? I'm what I always have been. . . . I can't change. I can't be untrue—to myself. I'm—I'm not very happy, but I should despise myself if I did that."
He did not look at her in the long silence that followed. As she left him, she said: "I'm not accusing you. Only . . . I can't help you to do what you wish. Don't ask me—please."
When he had left Margaret, after that first meeting, he had been numb with a cold depression of spirits. He
