Hour after hour she entreated God to make terms with her. The night crept by, slow-footed and silent, but she was not aware of the passing of time, or of the deepening of the stillness within the house, or of the quivering of the sword above her head. She no longer listened for sounds from that distant room. She no longer strove to pierce the intervening walls with her mother's sixth sense. She heard nothing but the voice which had counselled her; she strove for nothing but to obey that voice. Her whole being concentrated itself into a prayer. She was conscious only of herself and God, and of her passionate effort to reach Him. "Oh, God, _hear_ me! I have sinned, but I will sin no more. My heart is broken with remorse. I will never write again!" So she pleaded with God throughout the long night. And pitiful and insolent as was her bargaining, God must have found in it something to weigh. For with the first light of the morning, Ted opened the door--and there was light in his worn face, too. "Sheila--_Sheila_!----" And then they fell into each other's arms, sobbing--sobbing as they could not have done if their little son had died. CHAPTER XI With tragic sincerity Sheila had entered into the compact for her son's life, and she kept it to the letter. She saw no reason why she should have a poorer sense of honor toward God than she had toward men and women; her child had been spared to her, and henceforth it was for her to fulfill her part, to keep her given word. She had never understood, indeed, why people made--and broke--promises to God so lightly. She had found them ready enough to complain if they considered God unjust to them, but they never seemed to think that it mattered whether they were "square" with God or not. To them He was a sort of divine creditor who need not be paid. They even made it a proof of reverence--a comfortable proof!--to place Him far above the consideration they had to show their fellow men. This viewpoint was impossible to Sheila. Morbid, hysterical, as her offered price for Eric's life had been, she felt herself bound, and she paid punctiliously. It was easy enough thus to pay as she watched her child growing strong and rosy again. His little life--Ah, what was it not worth? A dozen times a day the memory of that night when she had believed that he would die sent her shuddering to her knees with fresh prayers and promises. And always the recollection of that loss escaped roused in her a very passion of thanksgiving. She had her son!--that was her answer to all the dreams which, unrealized, sometimes stole back to tempt her with their wistful faces.