"Tell me! oh tell me!" she implored. "I cannot bear it—I shall die if you do not tell me." The secret she had caught gave her fierce strength. "You wish to leave me, you are sorry! You want to go away because you think it is a sin to love me? You are miserable because you gave up—left your Church?" Everything was bursting from her like the tempest. "I could let you go," she sobbed, "but I cannot believe that we have done wrong. It is too cruel. I cannot give you up. Your God never meant you to suffer alone. If you go back they will make you suffer—never let you forget. And—and you could not forget that I am your wife—that you love me?"
She clung to him in fear. Would he answer her—deny what she said? "You do love me?" she softened at the thought, and kissed his forehead. "We love each other as God meant we should. We will blot out the past, live! You shall be another man." She was pleading her own case with Philip's. Her tears had ceased to fall. "We will do good jointly, do something to better the world, a world outside of narrow creeds and inhuman dogma." She would not acknowledge the advantage of his lost opportunity. Individual power for accomplishment was as honorable as to bow beneath a yoke. Her argument had been forming through miserable days. "Life is beautiful! most beautiful when we may help others to enjoy it. When your book comes out——"
Philip sprang up, tearing loose her arms. Then he fell back. She thought again that he was dead. She tried to turn on light and failed. Something had been struck in the garden! The terrific bolt must have severed main electric wires. Trembling in darkness she thought of a wax taper on the dressing table and felt about for matches. In a momentary flash through the window she found what she sought. But she dreaded to look at Philip. What if—she approached the bed, then he sat up and spoke to her as one utterly despairing.
"Never speak of the book again," he implored. He sank on the pillow, and she waited for him to go on. "I should have told you—forgive me," he said at last. "The manuscript has come back."
Isabel burst into fresh tears. She seemed powerless to remember her husband's alarming condition. "No! no!" she sobbed. "You cannot mean it,—there is some mistake. The book will make you famous, it cannot fail!"
"But it has failed," he answered with momentary strength. "They do not care to publish it; it stands dishonored like—the man who wrote it."
She blanched at his words. "Come back! Your manuscript returned?" she faltered. "You cannot mean it; where is the letter? I must see it."
He smiled piteously, pointing to a closed desk at the other side of the room, where she found the pasteboard box loosely held in brown paper. The name of a prominent publishing house was stamped outside the wrapper and inside was the letter.
She read, re-read, with burning cheeks—a polite, commercial decision; then she ran to Philip. Her eyes were blazing with champion light; her courage had returned. Great love for the stricken man gone down before a flood of disappointment enveloped her being. The force of her wonderful nature rose up for fresh battle.
"Darling!" she pleaded, "you are too ill to understand." She caught his hand as she crept close to his side. "They like your book,—know that it is fine; but they are afraid of the cost of publishing it. The pictures have frightened them and they are too commercial to take the risk of a sumptuous volume. One refusal is nothing! Our new friend will know the value of your work, and the manuscript must go to him at once." The positive current of her magnetic will, the plausibility of her conviction, above all, her tenderness, seemed a divine anodyne for Philip's sinking soul. Yet he dared not hope. The shaft of disgrace had been sunk too straight. He was too ill to resist remorse; too weak to deny the penalty for broken vows; too hopeless to defy authority which had thrust him down and trodden upon his self-respect. On the verge of fatal prostration, no sins were blacker than his own. Darkest of all appeared a selfish love forced upon innocent Isabel. Dishonored man that he was, she must share his shame. He closed his weary eyes.