"I can hardly believe you will come, Toni." So ran the letter in which Leonard Dowson accepted, the happiness promised to him. "It seems too good, too exceedingly, marvellously good to be true. Yet your little letter lies before me, and you are too kind, too sincere to deceive me. So it is true; and the sun has risen on my grey and lonely life. Then listen, Toni. I have made all preparations for my own departure to-night. I have paid off my servants, the rent, and left everything in order; and I am in possession of a sufficient sum of money in notes and gold to enable us to live for some months in peace on the Continent. Now comes the question of our meeting. I have ascertained that the night boat leaves Dover about eleven; and in order to cross to Calais, on the way to Paris, we must take the boat train from Victoria. I think it will be safer to motor up to town rather than risk meeting any acquaintances in the train; and a car will be waiting at the corner of Elm Lane at six o'clock. That will give us sufficient time to catch the train, and will be pleasanter than the other mode of travelling. With regard to your luggage, do not trouble to bring more than a dressing-case; for it will be my pleasure and privilege in future to provide you with all you may desire. I have still much to do, so will bid you farewell until the precious moment which brings you to my side." He had evidently hesitated over his signature; there were one or two erasures; but at length he had written, his name firmly, without any attempt at a formal leave-taking. For perhaps a minute Toni stared at the two words "Leonard Dowson"; and a chill, as of anticipatory dread, swept over her at the sight of that firm, clerkly handwriting. Until this moment she had looked upon Leonard's proposal as the one and only means of setting Owen free. Once she had taken this step, had burned her boats, her husband would surely accept his freedom with a feeling of vast relief; and in spite of everything Toni had only one thought--that of Owen's good. But suddenly she was afraid, with a purely human, selfish fear for herself. To what was she condemning herself by this unlawful flight? When once Owen had accepted her sacrifice, had set in order the machinery of the law which should give him his release, what would become of her? Would she be obliged to marry a man for whom she felt only a tepid friendship, unwarmed by the smallest coal from the fire of love? She had found life sad even when married to the man she loved; but what would it be to her as the wife of a man to whom she was almost completely indifferent? Quite unconsciously Toni was exaggerating Owen's attitude towards his marriage, was accepting as his last word a few irritable sentences wrung from him by fatigue and annoyance at having seen the corrected proofs destroyed in a fit of childish temper on the part of his wife.