CHAPTER XIII. THE PARTY
It must have been strange indeed for Helen to come from that quiet room, that intimate scene with Osmund, into the racket and confusion of this absurd and fantastic company.
She had at the moment, however, thought only for Osmund.
If that scene had meant anything it had meant this--that she would not leave him now until this thing was finished.
I had become for her something quite secondary so soon as she had realized that Osmund was no longer capable of looking after himself. She had about him the feeling-only a hundred times intensified--the sense that I was having at the same moment about Hench--that he was crazed and so was helpless in a world composed for the most part of sane and careful human beings.
But she could have been excused if, on coming into the
