A man more apt at dissimulation would have treated the matter from the first with joking irony, and might have carried his point, though with difficulty. Wilfrid had not the aptitude, to begin with, and he was gravely disturbed. His pulses were throbbing; scarcely could he steady his voice. He dreaded a disclosure of what might well be regarded as throwing doubt upon his sincerity, the more so that he understood in this moment how justifiable such a doubt would be. After the merriment of a few minutes ago, this sudden shaking of his nerves was the harder to endure. It revived with painful intensity the first great agitations of his life. His way of speaking could not but confirm Beatrice's suspicions. 'We are not exactly strangers to each other,' she said, coldly. 'No, we are not; yet I think I should have forborne to press you on any matter you thought it needless to speak of.' She put on her hat. Wilfrid felt his anger rising--our natural emotion when we are disagreeably in the wrong, yet cannot condemn the cause which has made us so. He sat to the table again, as if his part in the discussion were at an end. Beatrice stood for some moments, then came quickly to his side. 'Wilfrid, have you secrets from me?' she asked, the tremor of her voice betraying the anguish that her suspicions cost her. 'Say I am ill-mannered. It was so, at first; I oughtn't to have said anything. But now it has become something different. However trifling the matter, I can't bear that you should refuse to treat me as yourself. There is nothing, nothing I could keep from you. I have not a secret in my life to hide from you. It is not because they are letters--or not only that. You put a distance between us you say there are affairs of yours in which I have no concern. I cannot bear that! If I leave you, I shall suffer more than you dream. I thought we were one. Is not your love as complete as mine?' He rose and moved away, saying-- 'Open it! Look at the letters!' 'No, that I can't do. What can it be that troubles you so? Are they letters that I _ought_ not to see?' He could bear it no longer. 'Yes,' he answered, brusquely, 'I suppose they are.' 'You mean that you have preserved letters which, as often as you open that drawer, remind you of someone else?--that you purposely keep them so near your hand?' 'Beatrice, I had no right to destroy them.' 'No right!' Her eyes flashed, and her tongue trembled with its scorn. 'You mean you had no wish.' 'If I had no right, I could scarcely have the wish.'