"Helen would be more unhappy if she thought I were not here to look after Ward.
Yes, I must wait till he gets stronger.

Perhaps next month"-- Then, shaking himself together, with a revulsion of common sense, "As she is unhappy, she won't care whether I'm there or not, or may be she'd rather I wasn't!" Yet, though he could not easily subdue the desire to rush to Ashurst, the thought that Helen's sorrow would be a little greater if she could not think of him as near her husband, helped to keep him at his post.
But it might have been good for Helen to have had the young man's frank and healthy understanding of her position.

She was growing every day more lonely and self-absorbed; she was losing her clear perceptions of the values of life; she became warped, and prejudiced, and very silent.

She even fancied, with a morbid self-consciousness which would have been impossible before, that she had never possessed the love of her uncle and cousin, and had always been an alien.

This subtile danger to her generous nature was checked in an unexpected way.
One afternoon, late in September, she went as usual, alone, to the graveyard on East Hill.