"Listen to me!" he broke in. "Listen before I lose the blessed impulse to say there is but one cure. I must give you up to Leonard Byington. Oh, let me speak! I took you from him by law; by law I will give you back." "Do you mean divorce, Arthur?" "I do." "On what ground?" "On the ground of ill treatment. You shall bring suit; I will plead guilty." She rose, with his temples still in her hands. "Ah! whose words are idle now?" She bent over him with eyes of passionate kindness. "You did not take me from him. You asked me to take you, and for better for worse, till death us do part, I took you, Arthur, knowing as much of any other man's love for me as I know at this hour. You could not steal me; the shame would be mine, to have let you. You are no thief! I am no stolen thing! You shall be happy with me; you shall not give me up!" He leaped to his feet and snatched her into his arms. The babe cried sleepily from its mother's room. She tenderly disengaged herself, left him in the door, moved on to the child's crib, and in the dim light of the bedside taper, facing him from beyond it, soothed the little one by her silent touch. To Arthur, wan and frail though she was, the sight was heavenly fair, a vision of ineffable peace to which it seemed a sacrilege to draw nearer; but she beckoned, and he stole to the spot. With the quieted babe in its crib between them, the pair knit arms about each other's neck and kissed. "My own! my own at last!" murmured the husband. "I never had you until now!" "The cure has worked, dear heart," breathed the wife,--"worked without surgery, has it not?" "The cure has worked," he replied,--"worked without the sacrifice. Oh, the sudden sweet ease of it!" Whispering a fervent good-night in response to hers, he covered her head and brows with caresses; then stole away with eyes still fastened on her, and at the dividing threshold waved a last parting and closed the door. XVII SLEEP, OF A SORT Isabel went to her couch in great heaviness and agitation. Her sad confidings to her mother, Minnie's adventure, Arthur's pitiful if not alarming condition, she strove to reconsider duly and in their order; but perpetually there interfered, with its every smallest detail thrillingly clear and strong, that moment which had thrown her once more into the company, tossed her into the very clutch, of Leonard Byington. She turned her face into her pillow and prayed God for other thoughts and visions, and at length, while charging herself to see her mother in time to postpone the sending of her dispatch to Godfrey, she slept. Sleep, of a sort, came also to Arthur, though not before many an evil imagination had come back to tease and sting his galled mind.