Helen thrilled. He looked so distinguished, was so elegantly dressed in his simple manly way, had that gloss, that sheen, which marks all the kinds and conditions of anglers for the opposite sex. "What shall I talk about?" she asked.
Her sympathetic smile, showing her excellent teeth and lighting up her dark eyes, changed for him her common-place query into a stimulating exhibit of depth of soul. "Anything—anything," he said. "You’ve got such an honest, sweet voice that whatever you say makes one feel better."
But her instinct told her he had brought his stained soul to confessional. "It might help you," she suggested, blushing at her own boldness.
He looked gratefully at her and away. "It seems to me," said he, "you’ve been avoiding me. Is it so?"
"I suppose it was instinctive," he went on. "To you, I’d seem— Sometimes I feel that, if you and I had kept on with those talks we were having last spring, things would have been different with me. However, it’s too late now."
Helen’s eyes filled. "Oh, no. It’s never too late," said she.
He sighed and rose—Courtney was coming toward them. Helen took no part in the conversation that followed. She was pondering the few meaningless and youthful phrases he had uttered as if they were freighted with wisdom and destiny. And she continued to ponder them after he and Courtney and Winchie went away for a drive to Wenona. The more meaningless a thing is, the more food for thought to those incapable of thinking. When it is clear, it is grasped at once and the incident closes; but let it have no meaning at all, and lives will be devoted to cogitating upon it, and library shelves will groan with tomes of exegesis. Helen found in Basil’s words what she wished to find—found a plain mandate of duty to help him. He couldn’t be so very bad—probably not so bad as Richard was in his bachelor days, before chemistry and Courtney calmed him. And look at Richard now!
She did not know the very particular dangers for Basil in drink. But she saw that he was taking a great deal more whisky and water than formerly, and she felt that it had to do with his obviously desperate depression. Her one chance to see him, she knew, was when Courtney was occupied; for, had she not led Courtney to think that she did not wish to be left alone with him ever? She decided it was best not to tell Courtney she had changed her mind—somewhat—about him; Courtney would misjudge, would think her careless about principle, weak, love-sick—worst of all, would probably advise against her talking with him. Thus it came to pass that when Courtney was safely occupied—with callers, with Winchie, at sewing or painting or dressing—Helen put herself oftener and oftener in such a position that Basil could find her if he chose. She did not dream that he also wished to be stealthy; she thought the stealth was all on her own side—and he, seeing this, soon pretended to himself that he thought so, too, and had not the slightest sense of guilt toward Courtney. It did not take him long to find a satisfying explanation for Helen’s aversion to having it known that they met alone; here, decided he, was another evidence of her modesty, her delicate sensitiveness of the good woman who can’t bear being talked about lightly—and, if they talked alone where others could see, there would surely be joking and teasing and gossiping.