“But he will be with me--and surely I care for him as much as you do,” he argued, vehemently. “But why can’t I take him with me,” she sought to adjust the difficulty, “even though the pleasure of the trip is lost if you don’t go?” “Because--because,” he hesitated. “Because I cannot bear the separation from him,” he declared bluntly. “I am afraid something--I don’t know what--might happen to him. I know I am a fool. I couldn’t bear it.” His folly went to her heart in his behalf as nothing else could have done. This evidence of his love for the child, his son and hers, atoned for a thousand slights and tyrannies which she forgave on the spot. Her brow cleared, her face relaxed, her cheek flushed. “Aha!” she cried jubilantly, “you know how it feels, too!” She gleefully shook her fan at him. “We will let the trip to the Orient drop, now and forever. I can’t go without little Edward, and you”--she gave him a radiant, rallying smile--“can’t spare him, so we will just stay at home and see as much of each other as the old lawsuit will let you. And what I want to know,” she added, with a touch of indignation, “is, why do those lawyers of yours allow the matter to harass you? It is their business to take the care of it off your shoulders.” He stood silent throughout this speech, changing expressions flitting across his face, but it hardened upon the allusion to the lawsuit and his vacillation solidified into resolve. “Come, Paula, this talk is idle; the matter is arranged. The Hardingtons start for New York to-morrow, and sail as soon as they strike the town. Mrs. Hardington says she will be enchanted to have you of her party, and I have telegraphed and received an answer engaging your stateroom on the ship. Your section in the Pullman is also reserved,--couldn’t get the stateroom on the train--already taken, hang it.” She had risen to her feet and was gazing at him with a sort of averse amazement, once more pale and agitated, and with a strange difficulty of articulation. “Why, Edward, what do you mean? Why should you want to get me out of the country? There’s something behind all this, evidently.” She noted that he winced by so slight a token as the flicker of an eyelash. “You know that I would not consent to go without my child for any earthly consideration.” “I know no such thing, as I have told you,” he retorted hotly. “The arrangements are all made. Your passage is taken. I have ready your letter of credit. I do think you are the most ungrateful wretch alive,” he exclaimed, his eyes aglow with anger. “A beautiful and costly trip, that you have longed for, planned out for you in every detail, and you----” he broke off with a gesture of repudiation. “I wouldn’t be separated from my child for one night for all the jauntings about the globe that could be devised,” she declared. Floyd-Rosney suddenly lost all self-control. “Well, you certainly will be separated from him for one night--for many nights,--for he is gone!”