lung to him more eagerly.

"Dear Hartley!" she said, "will you not speak to me?"

"Irene!" His voice was cold and deep, and as he pronounced her name
he withdrew himself from her embrace. At this she grew calm and
stepped a pace back from him.

"Irene, we are not children," he said, in the same cold, deep voice,
the tones of which were even and measured. "That time is past. Nor
foolish young lovers, who fall out and make up again twice or thrice
in a fortnight; but man and wife, with the world and its sober
realities before us."

"Oh, Hartley," exclaimed Irene, as he paused; "don't talk to me in
this way! Don't look at me so! It will kill me. I have done wrong. I
have acted like foolish child. But I am penitent. It was half in
sport that I went away, and I was so sure of seeing you at Ivy Cliff
yesterday that I told father you were coming."

"Irene, sit down." And Emerson took the hand of his wife and led her
to a sofa. Then, after closing the parlor door, he drew a chair and
seated himself directly in front of her. There was a coldness and
self-possession about him, that chilled Irene.

"It is a serious thing," he said, looking steadily in her face, "for
a wife to leave, in anger, her husband's house for that of her
father."

She tried to make some reply and moved her lips in attempted
utterance, but the organs of speech refused to perform their office.

"You left me once before in anger, and I went after you. But it was
clearly understood with myself then that if you repeated the act it
would be final in all that appertained to me; that unless you
returned, it would be a lifelong separation. You _have_ repeated the
act; and, knowing your pride and tenacity of will, I did not
anticipate your return. And so I was looking the sad, stern future
in the face as steadily as possible, and preparing to meet it as a
man conscious of right should be prepared to meet whatever trouble
lies in store for him. I went out this evening, after passing the
Christmas day alone, with the purpose of consulting an old and
discreet friend as to the wisest course of action. But the thing was
too painful to speak of yet. So I came back--and you are here!"

She looked at him steadily while he spoke, her face white as marble,
and her colorless lips drawn back from her teeth.

"Irene," he continued, "it is folly for us to keep on in the way we
have been going. I am wearied out, and you cannot be happy in a
relation that is for ever re