Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/179

A Puritan Bohemia do it, Miss Helen. And I always thought it was you he liked, didn't you?"

"No," answered Helen bravely but untruthfully, "never."

Annabel went away after a brief conversation. Helen stood by her ruined picture, shamefacedly conscious of what she had been thinking when she made the great red stroke.

"Oh," she said, gazing at her work with wet brown eyes. "Why did I never see?"

Annabel's words had been a sudden flash of light along the path of the whole winter. It was all clear. Helen sat down on the pine box and hid her face in her hands. She had neither art nor life. There was nothing for her hands to hold by. She had failed to reach and help her suffering fellow-women. She had failed in art. Defeat, defeat, defeat was written on the walls, the windows, the furniture of the room. All that the past months had done was to create a great lack in her life that nothing now could ever fill.

A practical thought at last stemmed the