Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/191

Rh impatient. She liked prolonging the sweet adventure. It couldn't possibly come out but one way. Stephen's eyes had told her over and over that she was the only girl in the world for him, and her eyes had replied, shiningly, mistily, that she knew it—she knew it and was glad! At least she thought that was what his eyes had said. She thought he understood what she had replied.

When his father did that awful thing, Helen's love for Stephen burst into a blinding desire to help and comfort and share. Her own father had died a few months before. She was alone in the world. If Stephen had need of her, she had need of him, too. She must tell him so when his long torturing journey home was over and he came to her.

Helen waited for three days for Stephen to come to her. Finally, convinced that he was waiting for a sign from her, she stole out quietly, one evening, by herself, and called at the Dallas's big brown house, shrouded in its silent and solemn horror. She stood on the doorstep and rang the bell, and without explanation asked for Stephen. He was out. She left her card with a hasty pencil message written on it, "Please come over to-night. Helen." But he didn't come.

didn't see Stephen Dallas again until one day, fifteen years later, sauntering along one of the bridle-paths of Central Park, she glanced up and there he was standing before her (on horseback also) with his hat off, smiling and saying, "Do you remember me?"