"
"Words, Isabel, mere words of yours, which I see now were meant in
purest play. You told Leonard"--
"Leonard! What did I tell Leonard, dear?"
"You told him not to confess certain anxieties, even if they were
justified."
"Oh, Arthur!"
"I see my folly, dearest. But Isabel, he ought not to have answered that
the more they were justified, the more they should go unconfessed!"
"Oh, Arthur! the merest, idlest prattle! What meaning could you"--
"None, Isabel, none! Only, my good angel, I so ill deserve you that with
every breath I draw I have a desperate fright of losing you, and a
hideous resentment against whoever could so much as think to rob me of
you."
"Why, dear heart, don't you know that couldn't be done?"
"Oh, I know it, you being what you are, even though I am only what I am.
But, Isabel, you know he loves you. No human soul is strong enough to
blow out the flame of the love you kindle, Isabel Morris, as one would
blow out his bedroom candle and go to sleep at the stroke of a clock."
"Arthur, I believe Leonard--and I do not say it in his praise--I believe
Leonard can do that!"
"No, not so, not so! Leonard is strong, but the fire of a strong man's
love, however smothered, burns on without mercy, my beautiful, and you
cannot go in and out of that burning house as though it were not on
fire."
"And shall Leonard, then, not be our nearest and best friend, as we had
planned?"
"He shall, Isabel.
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