Helen was at last coming, and she was fluttered at the thought of her coming, but she was far more able to cope with Helen; there was more self to do it with; she was stronger, more independent of Helen's opinion and of Helen's affection.
But dimly she felt also--hardly aware she felt it--that she was a more effective self as the undecided recipient of Franklin's devotion than as his affianced wife.

A rayless person, it seemed, could crown one with beams as long as one maintained one's distance from him; merged with him one shared his insignificance.

To accept Franklin might be to shear them both of all the radiance they borrowed from each other.
Helen arrived on a very hot evening in mid-August.

She had lost the best train, which brought one to Merriston at tea-time--Althea felt that Helen was the sort of person who would always lose the best train--and after a tedious journey, with waits and changes at hot stations, she received her friend's kisses just as the dressing-bell for dinner sounded.

Helen, standing among her boxes, while Amelie hurriedly got out her evening things, looked extremely tired, and felt, Althea was sure, extremely ill-tempered.