Diverging Roads · Chapter
Chapter XVII explained
Paul returns to Helen, confessing his enduring love.
What happens
Paul returns to Helen, confessing his enduring love. They reconcile emotionally, but Helen is torn between her lingering duty to Bert and her revived feelings for Paul. She promises to seek freedom, though she doubts she can achieve it. The chapter then shifts to Helen's demanding real estate work, her exhaustion, and her growing disillusionment with the business. She confronts a colleague about a risky German investment amid rising war fears, and returns home to her lonely bungalow, finding solace in her independence. Later, she hosts Paul for dinner, where their intimacy clashes with her bitter critique of her profession and her anxiety over the looming European war.
Themes in this chapter
Love and Sacrifice
Helen and Paul's reunion is marked by deep emotional sacrifice: Paul struggles with guilt over Bert, and Helen promises to seek freedom despite knowing she may never be truly free.
Economic Hardship and Enterprise
Helen's grueling real estate work, the pressure to close sales, and her anxiety over the European war's impact on her business illustrate the economic challenges and enterprise of the era.
Isolation and Longing
Helen's lonely bungalow, her longing for connection with Paul, and her sense of being 'wearing out' underscore her isolation and emotional longing.
Characters to notice
- Paul
Returns to Helen, confessing his love and his inability to forget her; he is torn by guilt over Bert but hopeful for a future together.
- Helen Davies
Reunites emotionally with Paul, promises to seek freedom from Bert, but feels the old love is dead; later struggles with exhaustion and disillusionment in her real estate work, finding comfort in her home and independence.
- Mason
Referred to as Bert; Helen reflects that her love for him is dead, like a corpse in her heart, though she feels bound by his rights.
- Monroe
Encountered by Helen at a Sacramento hotel; he is a fellow real estate salesman who asks about Gilbert and comments on her success.
- J. D. Hutchinson
A lazy but competent salesman; Helen urgently advises him to make a client cable money out of Germany due to the impending war.
- Ted
Mentioned as Ted Collin; his gasoline bill causes a heated discussion in the office.
Key passages
“Oh, there were girls. I even tried to think that maybe—but somehow, none of them were you. I couldn’t help coming back.”
Paul tells Helen that he tried to move on with other women, but none compared to her, so he returned.
Paul's confession of enduring love and inability to replace Helen.
“The tragedy that shook her was that it was true, that all the passion and beauty of her old love for Bert was dead, lying like a corpse in her heart, never to be awakened and never utterly forgotten.”
Helen realizes with sorrow that her love for Bert is completely dead, though the memory lingers.
Helen's internal recognition that her marriage to Bert is emotionally over.
“I will be free, she promised, knowing that she never would be.”
Helen promises Paul she will free herself from Bert, but she knows deep down she will never actually do so.
Helen's conflicted promise, acknowledging the impossibility of true freedom.
“It came to her in a clear flash of thought through one of their silences that the maternal quality in a woman’s love is not so much due to the mother in the woman as to the child in the man.”
Helen suddenly understands that a woman's nurturing love often arises from the man's childlike need, not from her own maternal instinct.
Helen's insight into the dynamics of love and care.
“I’m wearing out, she said, looking at them and at her skin, tanned to a smooth brown. Nobody cared. Why should she carefully save herself?”
Helen sees white hairs and a tanned face in the mirror, feeling exhausted and uncared for, questioning why she should conserve herself.
Helen's physical and emotional weariness from her demanding life.
“The silence around her was like cool water on a hot face.”
The quiet of her home feels refreshing and soothing to Helen after her stressful day.
Helen's relief and comfort in her own space.
