well, then," she replied, readily adjusting herself to his mood, "what's the trouble?"
"You know," he said in a different tone, "the same old one. Have you nothing to say to me, Helen?"
Her face hardened, ever so slightly, but he saw it and it pained him. "There's no use going over it again," she returned, "but if you insist, I will make my position clear once for all."
"Go on," he answered grimly.
"I'm not a child any longer," Helen began, "I'm a woman, and I want to make the most of my life – to develop every nerve and faculty to its highest and best use. I have no illusions but I have my ideals, and I want to keep them. I want to write – you never can understand how much I want to do it – and I have had a tiny bit of success already. I want to work out my own problems and live my own life, and you want me to marry you and help you live yours. It's no use, Frank," she ended, not unkindly, "I can't do it."
"See here, my little comrade," he returned, "you must think I'm a selfish beast. I'm not asking you to give up your work nor your highest and best development. Isn't there room in your life for love and work too?"
"Love and I parted company long ago," she answered.
"Don't you ever feel the need of it?"
She threw up her head proudly. "No, my work is all-sufficient. There is no joy like creation; no intoxication like success."
"But if you should fail?"
"I shall not fail," she replied confidently. "When you dedicate your whole life to a thing, you simply must have it. The only reason for a failure is that the desire to succeed is not strong enough. I ask no favours – nothing but a fair field. I'm willing to work, and work hard for everything I get, as long as I have the health and courage to work at all."
He looked at her a long time before he spoke again. The firelight lingered upon the soft curves of her throat with a caressing tenderness. Her eyes, deep, dark, and splendid, were shining with unwonted resolution, and her mouth, though set in determined lines, had a womanly sweetness of its own. Around her face, like a halo, gleamed the burnished glory of her hair.
For three long years he had loved her. Helen, with her eyes on things higher than love and happiness, had persistently eluded his wooing. His earnest devotion touched her not a little, but she felt her instinctive sympathy for him to be womanish weakness.
"This is final?" he asked, rising and standing before her.
She rose also. "Yes, please believe me – it must be final; there is no other way. I don't want lovers – I want friends."
"You want me, then, to change my love to friendship?"
"Yes."
"Never to tell you again that I love you?"
"No, never again."
"Very well, we are to be comrades, then?"
She gave him her hand. "Yes, working as best we may, each with the understanding and approval of the other; comrades in Bohemia."
Some trick of her voice, some movement of her hand – those trifles so potent with a man in love – beat down his contending reason. With a catch in his breath, he crushed her roughly to him, kissed her passionately on the mouth, then suddenly released her.
"Women like you don't know what you do," he said harshly. "You hold a man captive with your charm, become so vitally necessary to him that you are nothing less than life, enmesh, ensnare him at every opportunity, then offer him the cold comfort of your friendship!"
He was silent for a breathless instant; then in some measure, his self-control came back. "Pardon me," he said gently, bending over her hand. "I have startled you. It shall not occur again. Good night and good luck – my comrade in Bohemia!"
Helen stood where he had left her until the street door closed and the echo of his footsteps died away. The fire was a smouldering heap of ashes, and the room seemed deathly still. Her cheeks were hot as with a fever, and she trembled like one afraid. It was the first time he had crossed the conventional boundary, and he had said it would be the last, but Love's steel had struck flame from the flint of her maiden soul.
"I wish," she said to herself as she put the room in order, "that I lived on some planet where life wasn't quite so serious."
For his part he was pacing moodily down the street, with his hands in his pockets. Several times he swallowed a persistent lump in his throat. He could understand Helen's ambition, and her revolt against the conventions, but he could not understand her point of view. Even now, he would not admit that she was wholly lost to him. What she had said came back to him with convincing force: "When you dedicate your whole life to a thing, you simply must have it."
"We'll see," he said to himself grimly, "just how true her theory is."
Months passed, and Helen worked hard. She was busy as many trusting souls have been before with "The Great American Novel." She was putting into it all of her brief experience and all of her untried philosophy of life. She was writing of suffering she had never felt, and of love she could not understand.
She saw Frank now and then, at studio teas and semi-Bohemian gatherings, at which the newspaper men were always a welcome feature. There was no trace of the lover in his manner, and she began to doubt his sincerity, as is the way with women.
"So this is Bohemia?" he asked one evening when they met in a studio in the same building as Helen's den.
"Yes, – why not?"
"I was thinking it must be a pretty poor place if this is a fair sample of the inhabitants," he returned easily.
She flushed angrily. "I do not see why you should think so. Here are authors, musicians, poets, painters and playwrights – could one be in better company?"
He paid no attention to her ironical question. "Yes," he continued, "I see the authors. One is a woman – pardon me, a female – who has written a vulgar novel, and gained a little sensational notoriety. The other is a man who paid a fifth-rate publishing house a goodly sum to issue what he calls 'a romance.' The musicians are composers of 'coon songs' even though the African Renaissance has long since waned, and members of theatrical orchestras. The poets have their verses printed in periodicals which 'do not pay for poetry.' The only playwright present has written a vaudeville sketch – and I don't see the painters. Are they painting billboards?"
"Perhaps," said Helen, with exquisite iciness, "since you find us all so far beneath your level, you will have the goodness to withdraw. Your superiority may make us uncomfortable."
Half in amusement, and half in surprise, he left her in a manner which was meant to be coldly formal, and succeeded in being ridiculous.
After a while, Helen went home, dissatisfied with herself, and for the first time dissatisfied with the Bohemia over the threshold of which she had stepped. Always honest, she could not but admit the truth of his criticism. Yet she was wont to judge people by their aspirations rather than by their achievements. "We are all workers," she said to herself, as she brushed her hair. "Every one of those people is aspiring to what is best and highest in art. What if they have failed? Not fame, nor money, but art for art's dear sake. I am proud to be one of them."
In the course of a few weeks the novel was finished, and she subjected it to careful, painstaking revision. She studied each chapter singly, to see if it could not be improved, even in
