She was silent then, evidently not considering herself privileged to ask questions; and the silence was fraught for Althea with keenest discomfort.

It was only after a long pause that at last, tentatively and delicately, as though she guessed that Althea perhaps was resenting something, and perhaps wanted her to ask questions, Helen said: 'And--you don't think you can ever take him ?' 'My dear Helen! How can you ask me?
He isn't a man to fall in love with, is he ?' 'No, certainly not,' said Helen, smiling a little constrainedly, as though her friend's vehemence struck her as slightly excessive.

'But he might, from what you tell me, be a man to marry.' 'I couldn't marry a man I was not in love with.' 'Not if he were sufficiently in love with you?
Such faithful and devoted people are rare.' 'You know, Helen, that, however faithful and devoted he were, you couldn't fancy yourself marrying Franklin.' Helen, at this turning of the tables, looked slightly disconcerted.
'Well, as you say, I hardly know him,' she suggested.
'However well you knew him, you do know that under no circumstances could you marry him.' 'No, I suppose not.' Her look of readjustment was inflicting further and subtler wounds.
'Can't I feel in the same way ?' said Althea.
Helen, a little troubled by the feeling she could not interpret in her friend's voice, hesitated before saying--as though in atonement to Mr.
Kane she felt bound to put his case as favourably as possible: 'It doesn't quite follow, does it, that somebody who would suit you would suit me?
We are so different, aren't we ?' 'Different?
How ?' 'Well, I could put up with a very inferior, frivolous sort of person.
You'd have higher ideas altogether.' Althea still tried to smile.

'You mean that Franklin is too high an idea for you ?' 'Far, far too high,' said Helen, smiling back.
Franklin and Miss Buckston were now approaching them, and Althea had to accept this ambiguous result of the conversation.

One result, however, was not ambiguous.