“Why not now, Gerard? I have betrayed all my little secret--little, do I say--if you but knew how great, how all in all it is to me! I have shown you all my heart,” she whispered. They were leaning on the marble balustrade, gazing over the lovely gardens which the risen moon was silvering with her glory. “Why not now, Gerard?” she repeated, after a long pause, with sweet, gentle insistence. “What need of secrets between us two?” He longed to respond to this frank confession of her feelings by telling her everything; and the impulse to speak was only curbed with great effort. But prudence stayed him, and the fear of unknown consequences which might imperil everything by forcing a disclosure to de Proballe. “We will have no secrets one from the other, Gabrielle, when once this matter in my thoughts has been cleared up,” he said, his reluctance to refuse her plea causing him to speak with hesitation. “Is it the same of which you spoke to-day so strangely?” “The same, yes.” “But you were going to tell me--then.” Her pause before the word, and emphasis in speaking it, did not escape him. But even the subtle temptation implied in the sweet accent did not prevail. “Yes, I was going to tell you. If I do not, you trust me?” “Gerard, of course. I should trust you always. But--I am only a woman, and--curious,” she added, with a tender smile of reproachful invitation. “And if I assure you it is for your own sake that I hold this back, you will bear with me?” “For my sake? Now in truth you increase my perplexity, and do but whet my appetite. How can it be for my sake? You said to-day that it concerned the very purpose of your coming here; and when I spoke of that purpose as I knew it--our marriage, Gerard--you started back as if in alarm or overwhelming surprise. You pained me so that I was leaving you in anger.” “The pain was greater on my side than yours, Gabrielle.” “And then you suggested you had been led to deceive me in some strange way: I should not believe that, indeed; and, as if impelled by some sudden thought, you were about to tell me everything. And then my uncle came, and you whispered hurriedly that what you had to say was for my ears alone. Are we not alone now?” she asked with witching pressure; and she smiled tenderly, as she added: “You see I remember every word you said. Indeed, I could never forget them; but I cannot understand”; and she shook her head as if the puzzle were all beyond her solving. “If you but trust me, what else can matter?” he answered, at a loss how to meet her.