er resolved, Conscience must leave this place for a
time--until she could return with a stabler judgment. But just now he
could not argue with her.

"We'll be very quiet," he said reassuringly. "If you hear any sound in
the house you can go back. You're overwrought, dearest, and I've only
come to be near you. Nobody will see me except yourself, but if at any
time before daylight you want me, come to your window and raise the
blind. I'll be where I can see."

For a while she clung to him silently, her breath coming fast. About
them the moon shed a softness of pale silver and old ivory. The silence
seemed to carry a wordless hymn of peace and though they stood in shadow
there was light enough for lovers' eyes. The driven restlessness that
had made Conscience doubt her sanity was slowly yielding to a sense of
repose, as the tautened anguish of a mangled body relaxes to the balm of
an anesthetic. Slowly the slenderly curved and graciously proportioned
modeling of her lithe figure quieted from spasmodic unrest and the wild
racing measure of her heart-beat calmed. Then she turned up her face.
Her eyes cleared and her lips tilted their corners in a smile.

"I'm a horrid little demon," she declared in a voice freighted with
self-scorn, but no longer panic-stricken. "I've always hated a coward,
and I'm probably the most amazingly craven one that ever lived. I do
nothing but call on you to fight my battles for me when I can't hold my
own."

"You're an adorable little saint, with an absurd leaning toward
martyrdom," he fervently contradicted. "Why shouldn't you call on me?
Aren't you fighting about me?"

Her dark eyes were for a moment serene because she was treasuring this
moment of moonlight and the respite of love against the chances of
to-morrow.

"Anyhow you came--" she said, "and since you did there's at least one
more fight left in me." Then her voice grew again apprehensive. "It was
pretty bad before ... just hearing you preached against and being afraid
to reply because ... of the warning. Now he wants my promise that I'll
dismiss you forever ... and the worst of it is that he'll pound on it to
the end. What am I to do?"

"Is there any question?" he gravely asked her. "_Could_ you make that
promise?"

"No--no!" He felt the figure in his arms flinch at the words, "There's
no question of _that_, but how am I to keep him from raging himself to
death?"

"Hasn't the doctor warned him that he mustn't excite himself?