"I have trusted you as men seldom trust their wives," he said. "I thought I had done you a great wrong when I took you in the first bloom of your young beauty and made you my own; cutting you off for ever from the love of a young lover, and all the passion and romance of youth. Considering this, I tried to make amends by giving you perfect freedom, freedom to live your own life among your own friends, freedom for everything that could make a woman happy, except that romantic love which you renounced when you accepted me as your husband. I believed in you, Vera, I believed in your truth and purity as I believe in God. I could never have reconciled myself to the life we have led in this house if it were not for my invincible faith in your truth. But within this month that faith has been shaken. Your eyes have lost the old look--the lovely look through which truth shone like a light. There is something unhappy, something mysterious. There is a secret--and I must know that secret before I leave you." Her face changed to a look of stone as he watched her. It was no time for tears. It was time for a superhuman effort at repression, to hold every feeling in check, to make her nerves iron. There was defiance in her tone when she spoke, after a silence that seemed long. "There is no secret." "Then why are you unhappy?" "I am not unhappy. I have a fit of low spirits now and then, a feeling of physical depression, for which there is no reason; or perhaps my idle, useless life, and the luxury in which I live, may be the reason." "It is something more than low spirits. You are nervous and irritable and you have a frightened look sometimes, a look that frightens me. Oh, Vera, for God's sake be frank with me. Trust me half as much as I have trusted you. Trust me as a daughter might trust her father, knowing his measureless love, and knowing that with that love there would be measureless pity. Trust me, my beloved girl, throw your burden upon me, and you shall find the strength of a man's love, and the self-abnegation that goes with it." "I have no secret, no mystery; I mean to be worthy of your trust. I mean to be true to myself. If you doubt me let me go to America with you. Keep me with you." His face lighted as she spoke, and then he looked thoughtfully at the fragile form, the delicate features, the ethereal beauty that seemed to have so frail a hold on life. "No, you are not the stuff for sea voyages, and the storm and stress of New York. If we went there together I should have to leave you too much alone among strangers. I shall have an anxious time there; but it shall not be a long time. If possible, I shall be here to take you to Marienbad, and in the meantime you must live quietly, and do what your doctor tells you. He is to see you next week, remember." He held her to his heart, with stronger feeling than he had shown for a long time, and gave her his good-bye kiss. She flung herself on her knees as the door closed behind him.