Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/183

A Puritan Bohemia without the one thing that makes time endurable."

"One wouldn't mind the endless changing," interrupted Helen from her corner, "if one really learned anything. We just go round and round like squirrels in a cage."

"Somebody," Anne remarked, "said that all progress was simply a moving round from one part of the circle to another."

"That may be true," Howard answered; "only, when you get back to the starting-point, you find that it isn't the same point."

He rose to take Helen's cup, noticing, as he did so, that her cheeks looked thin in the firelight.

"It is for the last time," he said, as he held out his hand. The girl started, and Anne's pet Sèvres cup fell to the floor. Then, first, the young man caught the expression in Helen's eyes when they rested on him.

"That's symbolic," said Anne. "No;