"Dear husband! can you, will you forgive my childish folly?" His first impulse was to push her away, and he, even grasped her arms and attempted to draw them from his neck. She perceived this, and clung to him more eagerly. "Dear Hartley!" she said, "will you not speak to me ?" "Irene!" His voice was cold and deep, and as he pronounced her name he withdrew himself from her embrace. At this she grew calm and stepped a pace back from him. "Irene, we are not children," he said, in the same cold, deep voice, the tones of which were even and measured. "That time is past. Nor foolish young lovers, who fall out and make up again twice or thrice in a fortnight; but man and wife, with the world and its sober realities before us." "Oh, Hartley," exclaimed Irene, as he paused; "don't talk to me in this way! Don't look at me so! It will kill me. I have done wrong. I have acted like foolish child. But I am penitent. It was half in sport that I went away, and I was so sure of seeing you at Ivy Cliff yesterday that I told father you were coming." "Irene, sit down." And Emerson took the hand of his wife and led her to a sofa. Then, after closing the parlor door, he drew a chair and seated himself directly in front of her. There was a coldness and self-possession about him, that chilled Irene. "It is a serious thing," he said, looking steadily in her face, "for a wife to leave, in anger, her husband's house for that of her father." She tried to make some reply and moved her lips in attempted utterance, but the organs of speech refused to perform their office. "You left me once before in anger, and I went after you. But it was clearly understood with myself then that if you repeated the act it would be final in all that appertained to me; that unless you returned, it would be a lifelong separation. You _have_ repeated the act; and, knowing your pride and tenacity of will, I did not anticipate your return. And so I was looking the sad, stern future in the face as steadily as possible, and preparing to meet it as a man conscious of right should be prepared to meet whatever trouble lies in store for him. I went out this evening, after passing the Christmas day alone, with the purpose of consulting an old and discreet friend as to the wisest course of action. But the thing was too painful to speak of yet. So I came back--and you are here!" She looked at him steadily while he spoke, her face white as marble, and her colorless lips drawn back from her teeth.