"Byington, don't go. You're ill. You don't realize how ill you are. If you go at all, go home, and let me send some one with you. Why, your hand is as cold"—
"I'm all right," said the young man, freeing his hand and smiling with white lips. He took his hat and passed out.
Meanwhile Isabel lay on her bed too overwhelmed to rise. In his room adjoining, with doors locked, Arthur paced the floor. He had spent the first half of the night in an agonizing interview with his wife, and the second half in writing and rewriting the letter to Leonard.
Now Isabel noticed the cessation of his steps. In the door between them the key turned; then the door opened, and he stood, haggard and dishevelled, gazing on her. She sat up in the bed, wan, tear-spent, her glorious hair falling over the embroideries of her nightdress.
"Arthur, dear, I am sorry for every angry word I have spoken. But the things I have denied I must deny forever.
"If you should wait till doomsday, I could confess no more.
"I have never harbored one throb of unworthy or unsafe regard toward any man in this wide world.
"For me to say differently would be to lie in God's own face.
"I have had great happiness of Leonard's companionship, and I have been proud to be myself a proof that a man and a woman can be close, dear, daily friends without being lovers or kin, and earth be only more like heaven for it, to them and all theirs. If Leonard has confessed one word more than that for me,—or even for himself, Arthur, dearest,—he has lost his reason. It's a frightful explanation, but I find no other.
"Leonard Byington is not wicked, and if he were he wouldn't be so in a dastard's way.