"I'll light the gas," Elizabeth said, rising. But he caught her wrist. "No! No! there's no use lighting up now." As he spoke he pulled her down on his knee. "Elizabeth, is there no hope?" he said; "none? _none?_" She was silent. He leaned his forehead on her shoulder for a moment, and she heard that dreadful sound--a man's weeping. Then suddenly, roughly, he flung his arms about her, and kissed her violently--her lips, her eyes, her neck; the next moment he pushed her from his knee. "Why, why did you sit here in the dark to-night? I never knew you to sit in the dark!" He got on his feet, leaving her, standing amazed and offended, her hair ruffled, the lace about her throat in disorder; at the window, his back turned to her, he flung over his shoulder: "Look here--you can go. I won't hold you any longer. I suppose your uncle can fix it up; some damned legal quibble will get you out of it. I--I'll do my part." Before she could ask him what he meant he went out. He had accepted his opportunity! But it was not until the next day that she really understood. "He says," Mrs. Richie told Robert Ferguson, "that he will take Nannie and go abroad definitely; she can call it desertion. Yes; on Nannie's money of course; how else could he go? Oh, my poor Blair!" "'Poor Blair'? He deserves all he gets," Elizabeth's uncle said, after his first astonishment. Then, in spite of himself, he was sorry for Blair. "I suppose he's hard hit," he said, grudgingly, "but as for 'poor Blair,' I don't believe it goes very deep with him. You say he was out of temper because she had not lighted up, and told her she could go? Rather a casual way of getting rid of a wife." "Robert, how can you be so unjust?" she reproached him. "Oh, perhaps he will be a man yet! How proud his mother would be." "My dear Helena, one swallow doesn't make a summer." Then, a little ashamed of his harshness, he added, "No, he'll never be very much of a person; but he's his mother's son, so he can't be all bad; he'll just wander round Europe, with Nannie tagging on behind, enjoying himself more or less harmlessly." "Robert," she said, softly, "I'm not sure that Elizabeth will accept his sacrifice." "What! Not accept it? Nonsense! Of course she'll accept it. I should have doubts of her sanity if she didn't. If Blair had been half as much of a man as his mother, he'd have made the 'sacrifice,' as you call it, long ago. Helena, you're too extreme. Duty is well enough, but don't run it into the ground." Mrs. Richie was silent. "Helena, you _know_ she ought to leave him!" "If every woman left unpleasant conditions--mind, he isn't unkind or wicked; what would become of us, Robert?" Elizabeth's uncle would not pursue her logic; his face suddenly softened: "Well, David will come to his own at last! I wonder how soon after the thing is fixed up (_if_ it can be fixed up) they can marry?" The color rose sharply in her face. "You think they won't?" he exclaimed. "I hope not. Oh, I hope not!"