"If there was he didn't tell me."

"No. He wouldn't. Why did you hesitate just now?"

"Did I hesitate?"

"When I asked you if he was well."

"I thought you meant did I notice any signs of his illness coming on. I
didn't. But of course, as you know, he was very much shaken by---by your
little girl's death."

"You noticed that while I was away?"

"Y-es. But I certainly noticed it more on the night you were speaking
of."

"You would have said, then, that he must have received a severe shock?"

"Certainly--certainly I would."

Hannay responded quite cheerfully in his immense relief.

It was what they were all trying for, to make poor Mrs. Majendie believe
that her husband's illness was to be attributed solely to the shock of
the child's death.

"Do you think that shock could have had anything to do with his illness?"

"Of course I do. At least, I should say it was indirectly responsible for
it."

She put her hand up to hide her face. He saw that in some way
incomprehensible to him, so far from shielding her, he had struck a blow.

"Dr. Gardner told you that much," said he. He felt easier, somehow, in
halving the responsibility with Gardner.

"Yes. He told me that. But he had not seen him since October. You saw him
on Friday, the day I came home."

Hannay was confirmed in his suspicion that on Friday there had been a
scene. He now saw that Mrs. Majendie was tortured by the remembrance of
her part in it.

"Oh well," he said consolingly. "He hadn't been himself for a long time
before that."

"I know. I know. That only makes it worse."

She wept slowly, silently, then stopped suddenly and held herself in a
restraint that was ten times more pitiful to see. Hannay was unspeakably
distressed.

"Perhaps," said he, "if you could tell me what's on your mind, I might be
able to relieve you."

She shook her head.

"Come," he said kindly, "what is it, really? What do you imagine makes it
worse?"

"I said something to him that I didn't mean."

"Of course you did," said Hannay, smiling cheerfully. "We all say things
to each other that we don't mean. That wouldn't hurt him."

"But it did. I told him he was responsible for Peggy's death. I didn't
know what I was saying. I let him think he killed her."

"He wouldn't think it."

"He did. There was nothing else he could think. If he dies I shall have
killed him."

"You will have done nothing of the sort. He wouldn't think twice about
what a woman said in her anger or her grief. He wouldn't believe it. He's
got too much sense. You can put that idea out of your head for ever."

"I cannot put it out. I had to tell you--lest you should think--"

"Lest I should think--what?"

"That it was something else that caused his illness."

"But, my dear lady--it _was_ something else. I haven't a doubt about it."

"I know what you mean," she said quickly. "He had been drinking--poor
dear."

"How do you know that?"

"The doctor asked me. He asked me if he had been in the habit of taking
too much."

Hannay heaved a deep sigh of discomfort and disappointment.

"It's no good," said she, "trying to keep things from me. And there's
another thing that I must know."

"You're distressing yourself most needlessly. There is nothing more to
know."

"I know that woman was here. I do not know whether he came here to meet
her."

"Ah well--that I can assure you he did not."

"Still--he must have met her. She was here."

"How do you know that she was here?"

"You saw her yourself, coming out of the hotel. You were horrified, and
you pulled me back so that I shouldn't see her."

"There's nothing in that, nothing whatever."

"If you'd seen your own face, Mr. Hannay, you would have said there was
everything in it."

"My face, dear Mrs. Majendie, does not prove that they met. Or that there
was any reason why they shouldn't meet. It only proves my fear lest Lady
Cayley should stop and speak to you. A thing she wouldn't be very likely
to do if they had met--as you suppose."

"There is nothing that woman wouldn't do."

"She wouldn't do that. She wouldn't do that."

"I don't know."

"No. You don't know. So you're bound to give her the benefit of the
doubt. I advise you to do it. For your own peace of mind's sake. And for
your husband's sake."

"It was for his sake that I asked you for the truth. Because--"

"You wanted me to clear him?"

"Yes. Or to tell me if there is anything I should forgive."

"I can assure you he didn't come here to see Sarah Cayley. As to
forgiveness--you haven't got to forgive him that; and if you only
understood, you'd find that there was precious little you ever had to
forgive."

"If I only understood. You think I don't understand, even yet?"

"I'm sure you don't. You never did."

"I would give everything if I could understand now."

"Yes, if you could. But can you?"

"I've tried very hard. I've prayed to God to make me understand."

Poor Hannay was embarrassed at the name of God. He fell to contemplating
his waistcoat buttons in profound abstraction for a while. Then he spoke.

"Look here, Mrs. Majendie. Poor Walter always said you were much too good
for him. If you'll pardon my saying so, I never believed that until now.
Now, upon my soul, I do believe it. And I believe that's where the
trouble's been all along. There are things about a man that a woman like
you cannot understand. She doesn't try to understand them. She doesn't
want to. She'd die rather than know. So--well--the whole thing's wrapped
up in mystery, and she thinks it's something awful and iniquitous,
something incomprehensible."

"Yes. If she thinks about it at all."

"My dear lady, very often she thinks about it a great deal more than is
good for her, and she thinks wrong. She's bound to, being what she is.
Now, when an ordinary man marries that sort of woman there's certain to
be trouble."

He paused, pondering. "My wife's a dear, good, little woman," he said
presently; "she's the best little woman in the world for me; but I dare
say to outsiders, she's a very ordinary little woman. Well, you know, I
don't call myself a remarkably good man, even now, and I wasn't a good
man at all before she married me. D'you mind my talking about myself like
this?"

"No." She tried to keep herself sincere. "No. I don't think I do."

"You do, I'm afraid. I don't much like it myself. But, you see, I'm
trying to help you. You said you wanted to understand, didn't you?"

"Yes. I want to understand."

"Well, then, I'm not a good man, and your husband is. And yet, I'd no
more think of leaving my dear little wife for another woman than I would
of committing a murder. But, if she'd been 'too good' for me, there's
no knowing what I mightn't have done. D'you see?"

"I see. You're trying to tell me that it was my fault that my husband
left me."

"Your fault? No. It was hardly your _fault_, Mrs. Majendie."

He meditated. "There's another thing. You good women are apt to run away
with the idea that--that this sort of thing is so tremendously important
to us. It isn't. It isn't."

"Then why behave as if it were?"

"We don't. That's your mistake. Ten to one, when a man's once married
and happy, he doesn't think about it at all. Of course, if he isn't
happy--but, even then, he doesn't go thinking about it all day long. The
ordinary man doesn't. He's got other things to attend to--his business,
his profession, his religion, anything you like. Those are _the_
important things, the things he thinks about, the things that take up
his time."

"I see. I see. The woman doesn't count."

"Of course she counts. But she counts in another way. Bless you, the
woman may _be_ his religion, his superstition. In your husband's case it
certainly was so."

Her face quivered.

"Of course," he said, "what beats you is--how a man can love his wife
with his whole heart and soul, and yet be unfaithful to her."

"Yes. If I could understand that, I should understand everything. Once,
long ago, Walter said the same thing to me, and I couldn't understand."

"Well--well, it depends on what one calls unfaithfulness. Some men are
brutes, but we're not talking about them. We're talking about Walter."

"Yes. We're talking about Walter."

"And Walter is my dearest friend, so dear that I hardly know how to talk
to you about him."

"Try," she said.

"Well, I suppose I know more about him than anybody else. And I never
knew a man freer from any weakness for women. He was always so awfully
sorry for them, don't you know. Sarah Cayley could never have fastened
herself on him if he hadn't been sorry for her. No more could that
girl--Maggie Forrest."

"How did he come to know her?"

"Oh, some fellow he knew had behaved pretty badly to her, and Walter had
been paying for her keep, years before there was anything between them.
She got dependent on him, and he on her. We are pathetically dependent
creatures, Mrs. Majendie."

"What was she like?"

"She? Oh, a soft, simple, clinging little thing. And instead of shaking
her off, he let her cling. That's how it all began. Then, of course, the
rest followed. I'm not excusing him, mind you. Only--" Poor Hannay became
shy and unhappy. He hid his face in his hands and lifted it from them,
red, as if with shame. "The fact is," he said, "I'm a clumsy fellow, Mrs.
Majendie. I want to help you, but I'm afraid of hurting you."

"Nothing can hurt me now."

"Well--" He pondered again. "If you want to get down to the root of it,
it's as simple as hunger and thirst."

"Hunger and thirst," she murmured.

"It's what I've been trying to tell you. When you're not thirsty you
don't think about drinking. When you are thirsty, you do. When you're
driven mad with thirst, you think of nothing else. And sometimes--not
always--when you can't get clean water, you drink water that's--not
so clean. Though you may be very particular. Walter was--morally--the
most particular man I ever knew."

"I know. I know."

"Mind you, the more particular a man is, the thirstier he'll be. And
supposing he can never get a drop of water at home, and every time he
goes out, some kind person offers him a drink--can you blame him very
much if, some day, he takes it?"

"No," she said. She said it very low, and turned her face from him.

"Look here, Mrs. Majendie," he said, "you know _why_ I'm saying all
this."

"To help me," she said humbly.

"And to help him. Neither you nor I know whether he's going to live or
die. And I've told you all this so that, if he does die, you mayn't have
to judge him harshly, and if he doesn't die, you may feel that he's--he's
given back to you. D'you see?"

"Yes, I see," she said softly.

She saw that there were depths in this man that she had not suspected.
She had despised Lawson Hannay. She had detested him. She had thought him
coarse in grain, gross, unsufferably unspiritual. She had denied him any
existence in the world of desirable persons. She had refused to see any
good in him. She had wondered how Edith could tolerate him for an
instant. Now she knew.

She remembered that Edith was a proud woman, and that she had said that
her pride had had to go down in the dust before Lawson Hannay. And now
she, too, was humbled before him. He had beaten down all her pride. He
had been kind; but he had not spared her. He had not spared her; but the
gentlest woman could not have been more kind.

She rose and looked at him with a strange reverence and admiration.
"Whether he lives or dies," she said, "you will have given him back to
me."

She took up her third night's watch.

The nurse rose as she entered, gave her some directions, and went to her
own punctual sleep.

There was no change in the motionless body, in the drawn face, and in the
sightless eyes.

Anne sat by her husband's side and kept her hand upon his arm to feel the
life in it. She was consoled by contact, even while she told herself that
she had no right to touch him.

She knew what she had done to him. She had ruined him as surely as if she
had been a bad woman. He had loved her, and she had cast him from her,
and sent him to his sin. There was no humiliation and no pain that she
had spared him. Even the bad women sometimes spare. They have their pity
for the men they ruin; they have their poor, disastrous love. She had
been merciless where she owed most mercy.

Three people had tried to make her see it. Edith, who was a saint, and
that woman, who was a sinner; and Lawson Hannay. They had all taken the
same view of her. They had all told her the same thing.

She was a good woman, and her goodness had been her husband's ruin.

Of the three, Edith alone understood the true nature of the wrong she had
done him. The others had only seen one side of it, the material, tangible
side that weighed with them. Through her very goodness, she saw that that
was the least part of it; she knew that it had been the least part of it
with him.

Where she had wronged him most had been in the pitiless refusals of her
soul. And even there she had wronged him less by the things she had
refused to give than by the things that she had refused to take. There
were sanctities and charities, unspeakable tendernesses, holy and
half-spiritual things in him, that she had shut her eyes to. She had
shut her eyes that she might justify herself.

Her fault was there, in that perpetual justification and salvation of
herself; in her indestructible, implacable spiritual pride.

And she had shut her ears as she had shut her eyes. She had not listened
to her sister's voice, nor to her husband's voice, nor to her little
child's voice, nor to the voice of God in her own heart. Then, that she
might be humbled, she had had to take God's message from the persons
whom she had most detested and despised.

She had not loved well. And she saw now that men and women only counted
by their power of loving. She had despised and detested poor little Mrs.
Hannay; yet it might be that Mrs. Hannay was nearer to God than she had
been, by her share of that one godlike thing.

She, through her horror of one sin, had come to look upon flesh and
blood, on the dear human heart, and the sacred, mysterious human body, as
things repellent to her spirituality, fine only in their sacrifice to the
hungry, solitary flame. She had known nothing of their larger and diviner
uses, their secret and profound subservience to the flame. She had come
near to knowing through her motherhood, and yet she had not known.

And as she looked with anguish on the helpless body, shamed, and
humiliated, and destroyed by her, she realised that now she knew.

Edith's words came back to her, "Love is a provision for the soul's
redemption of the body. Or, may be, for the body's redemption of the
soul." She understood them now. She saw that Edith had spoken to her of
the miracle of miracles. She saw that the path of all spirits going
upward is by acceptance of that miracle. She, who had sinned the
spiritual sin, could find salvation only by that way.

It was there that she had been led, all the while, if she had but known
it. But she had turned aside, and had been sent back, over and over
again, to find the way. Now she had found it; and there could be no more
turning back.

She saw it all. She saw a purity greater than her own, a strong and
tender virtue, walking in the ways of earth and cleansing them. She saw
love as a divine spirit, going down into the courses of the blood and
into the chambers of the heart, moving mortal things to immortality.
She saw that there is no spirituality worthy of the name that has not
been proven in the house of flesh.

She had failed in spirituality. She had fixed the spiritual life away
from earth, beyond the ramparts. She saw that the spiritual life is here.

And more than this, she saw that in her husband's nature hidden deep down
under the perversities that bewildered and estranged her, there was a
sense of these things, of the sanctity of their life. She saw what they
might have made of it together; what she had actually made of it, and of
herself and him. She thought of his patience, his chivalry and
forbearance, and of his deep and tender love for her and for their child.

God had given him to her to love; and she had not loved him. God had
given her to him for his help and his protection; and she had not helped,
she had not protected him.

God had dealt justly with her. She had loved God; but God had rejected a
love that was owing to her husband. Looking back, she saw that she had
been nearest to God in the days when she had been nearest to her husband.
The days of her separation had been the days of her separation from God.
And she had not seen it.

All the love that was in her she had given to her child. Her child had
been born that she might see that the love which was given to her was
holy; and she had not seen it. So God had taken her child from her that
she might see.

And seeing that, she saw herself aright. That passion of motherhood was
not all the love that was in her. The love that was in her had sprung up,
full-grown, in a single night. And it had grown to the stature of the
diviner love she saw. And as she felt that great springing up of love,
with all its strong endurances and charities, she saw herself redeemed by
her husband's sin.

There she paused, trembling. It was a great and terrible mystery, that
the sin of his body should be the saving of her soul. And as she thought
of the price paid for her, she humbled herself once more in her shame.

She was no longer afraid that he would die. Something told her that he
would live, that he would be given back to her. She dared not think how.
He might be given back paralysed, helpless, and with a ruined mind. Her
punishment might be the continual reproach of his presence, her only
consolation the tending of the body she had tortured, humiliated, and
destroyed. She prayed God to be merciful and spare her that.

And on the morning of the fifth day Majendie woke from his terrible
sleep. He could see light. Towards evening his breathing softened and
grew soundless. And on the dawn of the sixth day he called her name,
"Nancy."

Then she knew that for a little time he would be given back to her. And,
as she nursed him, love in her moved with a new ardour and a new
surrender. For more than seven years her pulses had been proof against
his passion and his strength. Now, at the touch of his helpless body,
they stirred with a strange, adoring tenderness. But as yet she went
humbly, in her fear of the punishment that might be measured to her. She
told herself it was enough that he was aware of her, of her touch, of her
voice, of her face as it bent over him. She hushed the new-born hope in
her heart, lest its cry should wake the angel of the divine retribution.

Then, week by week, slowly, a little joy came to her, as she saw the
gradual return of power to the paralysed body and clearness to the
flooded brain. She wondered, when he would begin to remember, whether
her face would recall to him their last interview, her cruelty, her
repudiation.

At last she knew that he remembered. She dared not ask herself "How
much?" It was borne in on her that it was this way that her punishment
would come.

For, as he gradually recovered, his manner to her became more
constrained; notwithstanding his helpless dependence on her. He was shy
and humble; grateful for the things she did for him; grateful with a
heart-rending, pitiful surprise. It was as if he had looked to come back
to the heartless woman he had known, and was puzzled at finding another
woman in her place.

As the weeks wore on, and her hands had less to do for him, she felt that
his awakened spirit guarded itself from her, fenced itself more and more
with that inviolable constraint. And she bowed her head to the
punishment.

When he was well enough to be moved she took him to the south coast.
There he recovered power rapidly. By the end of February he showed no
trace of his terrible illness.

They were to return to Scale in the beginning of March.

Then, at their home-coming, she would know whether he remembered. There
would be things that they would have to say to each other.

Sometimes she thought that she could never say them; that her life was
secure only within some pure, charmed circle of inviolate silence; that
her wisdom lay in simply trusting him to understand her. She _could_
trust him. After all, she had been most marvellously "let off"; she had
not had to pay the extreme penalty; she had been allowed, oh, divinely
allowed, to prove her love for him. He could not doubt it now; it
possessed her, body and soul; it was manifest to him in her eyes, and
in her voice, and in the service of her hands.

And if he said nothing, surely it would mean that he, too, trusted her to
understand.




CHAPTER XL

They had come back. They had spent their first evening together in the
house in Prior Street. Anne had dreaded the return; for the house
remembered its sad secrets. She had dreaded it more on her husband's
account than on her own.

She had passed before him through the doorway of the study; and her heart
had ached as she thought that it was in that room that she had struck at
him and put him from her. As he entered, she had turned, and closed the
door behind them, and lifted her face to his and kissed him. He had
looked at her with his kind, sad smile, but he had said nothing. All that
evening they had sat by their hearth, silent as watchers by the dead.

From time to time she had been aware of his eyes resting on her in their
profound and tragic scrutiny. She had been reminded then of the things
that yet remained unsaid.

At night he had risen at her signal; and she had waited while he put the
light out; and he had followed her upstairs. At her door she had stopped,
and kissed him, and said good-night, and she had turned her head to look
after him as he went. Surely, she had thought, he will come back and
speak to me.

And now she was still waiting after her undressing. She said to herself,
"We have come home. But he will not come to me. He has nothing to say to
me. There is nothing that can be said. If I could only speak to him."

She longed to go to him, to kneel at his feet and beg him to forgive her
and take her back again, as if it had been she who had sinned. But she
could not.

She stood for a moment before the couch at the foot of the bed, ready to
slip off her long white dressing-gown. She paused. Her eyes rested on the
silver crucifix, the beloved symbol of redemption. She remembered how he
had given it to her. She had not understood him even then; but she
understood him now. She longed to tell him that she understood. But she
could not.

She turned suddenly as she heard his low knock at her door. She had been
afraid to hear it once; now it made her heart beat hard with longing and
another fear. He came in. He stood by the closed door, gazing at her with
the dumb look that she knew.

She went to meet him, with her hands out-stretched to him, her face
glowing.

"Oh, my dear," she said, "you've come back to me. You've come back."

He looked down on her with miserable eyes. She put her arms about him.
His face darkened and was stern to her. He held her by her arms and put
her from him, and she trembled in all her body, humiliated and rebuked.

"No. Not that," he said. "Not now. I can't ask you to take me back now."

"Need you ask me--now?"

"You don't understand," he said. "You don't know. Darling, you don't
know."

At the word of love she turned to him, beseeching him with her tender
eyes.

"Sit down," he said. "I want to talk to you."

She sat down on the couch, and made room for him beside her.

"I don't want," she said, "to know more than I do."

"I'm afraid you must know. When you do know you won't talk about taking
me back."

"I have taken you back."

"Not yet. I'd no business to come back at all, without telling you."

"Tell me, then," she said.

"I can't. I don't know how."

She put her hand on his.

"Don't," he said, "don't. I'd rather you didn't touch me."

She looked at him and smiled, and her smile cut him to the heart.

"Walter," she said, "are you afraid of me?"

"Yes."

"You needn't be."

"I am. I'm afraid of your goodness."

She smiled again.

"Do you think I'm good?"

"I know you are."

"You don't know how you're hurting me."

"I've always hurt you. And I'm going to hurt you more."

"You only hurt me when you talk about my goodness. I'm not good. I never
was. And I never can be, dear, if you're afraid of me. What is it that I
_must know_?"

His voice sank.

"I've been unfaithful to you. Again."

"With whom?" she whispered.

"I can't tell you. Only--it wasn't Maggie."

"When was it?"

"I think it was that Sunday--at Scarby."

"Why do you say you think?" she said gently. "Don't you know?"

"No. I don't know much about it. I didn't know what I was doing."

"You can't remember?"

"No. I can't remember."

"Then--are you sure you _were_--?"

"Yes. I think so. I don't know. That's the horrible part of it. I don't
know, I can't remember anything about it. I must have been drinking."

She took his hand in hers again. "Walter, dear, don't think about it.
Don't think it was possible. Just put it all out of your head and forget
about it."

"How can I when I don't know?" He rose. "See here--I oughtn't to look at
you--I oughtn't to touch you--I oughtn't to live with you, as long as I
don't know. You don't know, either."

"No," she said quietly. "I don't know. Does that matter so very much when
I understand?"

"Ah, if you could understand. But you never could."

"I do. Supposing I had known, do you think I should not have forgiven
you?"

"I'm certain you wouldn't. You couldn't. Not that."

"But," she said, "I did know."

His mouth twitched. His eyelids dropped before her gaze.

"At least," she said, "I thought--"

"You thought _that_?"

"Yes."

"What made you think it?"

"I saw her there."

"You saw her? You thought that, and yet--you would have let me come back
to you?"

"Yes. I thought that."

As he stood before her, shamed, and uncertain, and unhappy, the new
soul that had been born in her pleaded for him and assured her of his
innocence.

"But," she said again, "I do not think it now."

"You--you don't believe it?"

"No. I believe in you."

"You believe in me? After everything?"

"After everything."

"And you would have forgiven me that?"

"I did forgive you. I forgave you all the time I thought it. There's
nothing that I wouldn't forgive you now. You know it."

"I thought you might forgive me. But I never thought you'd let me come
back--after that."

"You haven't. You haven't. You never left me. It's I who have come back
to you."

"Nancy--" he whispered.

"It's I who need forgiveness. Forgive me. Forgive me."

"Forgive you? You?"

"Yes, me."

Her voice died and rose again, throbbing to her confession.

"I was unfaithful to you."

"You don't know what you're saying, dear. You couldn't have been
unfaithful to me."

"If I had been, would you have forgiven me?"

He looked at her a long time.

"Yes," he said simply.

"You could have forgiven me that?"

"I could have forgiven you anything."

She knew it. There was no limit to his chivalry, his charity. "Well," she
said, "you have worse things to forgive me."

"What have I to forgive?"

"Everything. If I had forgiven you in the beginning, you would not have
had to ask for forgiveness now."

"Perhaps not, Nancy. But that wasn't your fault."

"It was my fault. It was all my fault, from the beginning to the end."

"No, no."

"Yes, yes. Mr. Hannay knew that. He told me so."

"When?"

"At Scarby."

Majendie scowled as he cursed Hannay in his heart.

"He was a brute," he said, "to tell you that."

"He wasn't. He was kind. He knew."

"What did he know?"

"That I would rather think that I was bad than that you were."

"And would you?"

"Yes I would--now. Mr. Hannay spared me all he could. He didn't tell me
that if you had died at Scarby it would have been my fault. But it would
have been."

He groaned.

"Darling--you couldn't say that if you knew anything about it."

"I know all about it."

He shook his head.

"Listen, Walter. You've been unfaithful to me--once, years after I gave
you cause. I've been unfaithful to you ever since I married you. And your
unfaithfulness was nothing to mine. A woman once told me that. She said
you'd only broken one of your marriage vows, and I had broken all of
them, except one. It was true."

"Who said that to you?"

"Never mind who. It needed saying. It was true. I sinned against the
light. I knew what you were. You were good and you loved me. You were
unhappy through loving me, and I shut my eyes to it. I've done more harm
to you than that poor girl--Maggie. You would never have gone to her if I
hadn't driven you. You loved me."

"Yes, I loved you."

She turned to him again; and her eyes searched his for absolution. "I
didn't know what I was doing. I didn't understand."

"No. A woman doesn't, dear. Not when she's as good as you."

At that a sob shook her. In the passion of her abasement she had cast off
all her beautiful spiritual apparel. Now she would have laid down her
crown, her purity, at his feet.

"I thought I was so good. And I sinned against my husband more that he
ever sinned against me."

He took her hands and tried to draw her to him, but she broke away, and
slid to the floor and knelt there, bowing her head upon his knee. Her
hair fell, loosened, upon her shoulders, veiling her.

He stooped and raised her. His hand smoothed back the hair that hid her
face. Her eyes were closed.

Her drenched eyelids felt his lips upon them. They opened; and in her
eyes he saw love risen to immortality through mortal tears. She looked at
him, and she knew him as she knew her own soul.


The End





By MAY SINCLAIR

THE HELPMATE

_The Literary Digest_ says: "The novels of May Sinclair make waste paper
of most of the fiction of a season." This new story, the first written
since "The Divine Fire," will strengthen the author's reputation.
It has been serialized in _The Atlantic Monthly_, and _The New York Sun_
says of an early instalment:

"Miss Sinclair's new novel, 'The Helpmate,' is attracting much attention.
It is a miniature painting of delicacy and skill, reproducing few
characters in a small space, with fine sincerity,--the invalid sister,
the man with a past, and the wife with strict convictions. The riddle is
to find which one of the women is the helpmate. In the vital situation
thus far developed the sister is leading in the race."

As the plot develops the canvas is filled in with other characters as
finely drawn. The story grips the reader. Lovers of good literature and
of a good story will delight in its development.


THE DIVINE FIRE

The story of the regeneration of a London poet and the degeneration of a
London critic. 15th printing.


MARY MOSS in the _Atlantic Monthly_: "Certain it is that in all
our new fiction I have found nothing worthy to compare with 'The Divine
Fire,' nothing even remotely approaching the same class."


AUDREY CRAVEN

The story of a pretty little woman with the soul of a spoiled child, who
had a fatal fascination for most men.

_Literary Digest_: "Humor is of the spontaneous sort and rings true, and
the lancet of her wit and epigram, tho keen, is never cruel.... An author
whose novels may be said to make waste paper of most of the fiction of a
season."


SUPERSEDED

The story of two highly contrasted teachers in a girls' school.

_New York Sun_: "It makes one wonder if in future years the quiet little
English woman may not be recognized as a new Jane Austen."


THE TYSONS

(MR. AND MRS. NEVILL TYSON)

_Chicago Record-Herald_: "Maintains a clinging grip upon the
mind and senses, compelling one to acknowledge the author's
genius."