And it was this sweetness, this comprehension and tenderness, like sunlight flooding her gloomy and petrified young heart, that filled Helen with astonished bliss.

She was tamed at last to the extent of laughing with Gerald at herself; and, though the force of her nature led him, the sweetness of his nature controlled her.

They became the dearest of friends.
Yes, so it had always been; so it had always looked--to all the rest of the world, and to Gerald.

Helen, lying on her divan, saw the pictures of comradeship filling the years.

It was her consciousness of what the real meaning of the pictures was that supplied something else, something hidden and desperate that pulsed in them all.