Go and sin no more.'"

"Oh, Isabel, have mercy! With you to aid me, I could climb to almost
any height," cried the broken-spirited man, throwing out his hands in
despairing appeal.

"I am more merciful in my rejection of your proposal than I could
possibly be in acceding to it," she answered. "You broke every moral
tie and obligation that bound me to you when you left me and my child
to amuse yourself with another. Legally, I suppose, I am still your
wife, but I can never recognize the bond; henceforth, I can be nothing
but a stranger to you, though I wish you no ill, and would not lift my
hand against you in any way--"

"Do you mean by that that you would not even bring mortification or
scandal upon me by seeking to publicly prove the legality of our
marriage?" Mr. Goddard interposed, in a tone of surprise.

"Yes, I mean just that. Since the certificate is in my possession, and
I have the power to vindicate myself, in case any question regarding
the matter arises in the future, I am content."

"But I thought--I supposed--Will you not even use it to obtain a
divorce from me?" stammered the man, who suddenly remembered a certain
rumor regarding a distinguished gentleman's devotion to the beautiful
Mrs. Stewart.

"No; death alone can break the tie that binds me to you," she
returned, her lovely lips contracting slightly with pain.

"What! Have you no wish to be free?" he questioned, regarding her with
astonishment.

"Yes, I would be very glad to feel that no fetters bound me," she
answered, with clouded eyes; "but I vowed to be true as long as life
should last, and I will never break my word."

"True!" repeated her companion, bitterly.

A flush of indignation mounted to the beautiful woman's brow at the
reproach implied in his word and tone.

But she controlled the impulse to make an equally scathing retort, and
remarked, with a quiet irony that was tenfold more effective.

"Well, if that word offends you, I will qualify it so far as to say
that, at least, I have never dishonored my marriage vows; I never will
dishonor them."

Gerald Goddard threw out his hands with a gesture of torture, and for
a moment he became deathly white, showing how keenly his companion's
arrow had pierced his conscience.

There was a painful silence of several moments, and then he inquired,
in constrained tones:

"What, then, is my duty? What relations must I henceforth sustain
toward--Anna?"

"I cannot be conscience for you