ed--"leave this house."

Leonard turned scarlet, but his tone sank low. "Arthur, I don't believe
your soul is rotten. If I did, I should not be such a knave or such a
fool as to make any treaty with you that would leave you in your pulpit
one Sabbath Day."

"What do you--what do you mean by that?"

"I mean that such a treaty would be foul faith to everybody."

"So, then, you do propose one common shipwreck for us all."

"Quite the contrary. To trust the fortunes of our loved ones to any
treaty with a rotten soul would indeed be to launch them upon a stormy
sea in a rotten boat. But I do not believe your soul is so. I believe it
is sound,--still sound, though on fire; and so, to help you quench its
burning, I give you my pledge to be from this day a stranger to your
sweet wife. And now will you do something for me, to prove that your
soul is sound and is going to stay sound? It shall be the least I can
ask in good faith to the world we live in."

"What is it?" asked Arthur. There was no capitulation in his face or his
voice.

"I want you to make to Isabel a full retraction and explanation of every
falsehood you have uttered to her or to me in this matter." Leonard was
pale again; Arthur burned red a moment, and then turned paler than
Leonard.

"You fiend!" gasped the husband. "I am to exalt you, and abase myself,
to her?"

"No. No, Arthur. Women are strange; every chance is that in her eyes I
shall be abased." The speaker went whiter than ever.

"But be that as it may, you shall have lifted your soul out of the mire.
You must do it, Arthur; don't you see you must?"

Arthur sank into the chair at his side. He seemed to have guessed what
Leonard was keeping unsaid. A moisture of anguish stood on his brow.
Yet--

[Illustration: "Arthur Winslow, I give you five minutes."]

"I will die before I will do it," he said.

Leonard drew forth the letter, and then his watch. "Arthur Winslow, I
give you five minutes. If you don't make me that promise in that time, I
shall this day show this letter to your bishop."

The rector sat clenching his fingers and spreading them again, and
staring at the table.

A bead of sweat, then a second, and then a third started down his
forehead.

Presently he clutched the board, drew himself to his feet, and turned to
leave the chair, but fell across its arms, slid heavily from them, and
with one rude thump and then another lay unconscious on the floor.

Leonard sprang round the