He would not stir till the thing was sure.

[Illustration: "I am waiting busily for her slayer."]

As soon as it was dark enough to slip over to the Byingtons' unseen, she
went, bearing to Ruth Isabel's apologetic good-bys, trying her small
best to play at words with the General, and quickly getting away again,
grateful for a breath of their atmosphere, though distressfully
convinced that Ruth had divined the whole trouble, through the joy
betrayed by herself on hearing that Leonard would be away for a week.

She went home and slept like a weary child, and neither the next day nor
the next, nor the next, was so awful as this first had been; they lacked
the crackle and glare, and the crash, of the burning and falling temple.




XX

A DOUBLE RETURN


Let us not attempt the picture of Isabel keeping the happy guise of a
wedding guest among her kindred and childhood playmates while her heart
burned with perpetual misery, yearning, and alarm. "My baby, my baby!"
cried her breast, while the babe slept sweetly under faultless care.

Nor need we draw a close portrait of her husband's mind, if mind it
could longer be called. A horror of sleep, a horror of being awake and