"The better aspect of sport as compared with earnest," replied Irene. "At which both will continue to play until earnest is reached--and a worse earnest than the present. Take the case as you will, and it is one of the saddest and least hopeful that I have seen." Irene did not reply. "You must elect some course of action, and that with the least possible delay," said Mr. Delancy. "This letter requires an immediate answer. Go to your room and, in communion with God and your own heart, come to some quick decision upon the subject." Irene turned away without speaking and left her father alone in the library. CHAPTER VIII. THE FLIGHT AND THE RETURN. _WE_ will not speak of the cause that led to this serious rupture between Mr. and Mrs. Emerson. It was light as vanity--an airy nothing in itself--a spark that would have gone out on a baby's cheek without leaving a sign of its existence. On the day that Irene left the home of her husband he had parted from her silent, moody and with ill-concealed anger. Hard words, reproaches and accusations had passed between them on the night previous; and both felt unusually disturbed. The cause of all this, as we have said, was light as vanity. During the day Mr. Emerson, who was always first to come to his senses, saw the folly of what had occurred, and when he turned his face homeward, after three o'clock, it was with the purpose of ending the unhappy state by recalling a word to which he had given thoughtless utterance. The moment our young husband came to this sensible conclusion his heart beat with a freer motion and his spirits rose again into a region of tranquillity. He felt the old tenderness toward his wife returning, dwelt on her beauty, accomplishments, virtues and high mental endowments with a glow of pride, and called her defects of character light in comparison. "If I were more a man, and less a child of feeling and impulse," he said to himself, "I would be more worthy to hold the place of husband to a woman like Irene. She has strong peculiarities--who has not peculiarities? Am I free from them? She is no ordinary woman, and must not be trammeled by ordinary tame routine. She has quick impulses; therefore, if I love her, should I not guard them, lest they leap from her feebly restraining hand in the wrong direction? She is sensitive to control; why, then, let her see the hand that must lead her, sometimes, aside from the way she would walk through the promptings of her own will? Do I not know that she loves me? And is she not dear to me as my own life? What folly to strive with each other! What madness to let angry feelings shadow for an instant our lives!"