That single glance in the duke's house proved to be a fatal one for both. They were married inside of a month. The virile, confident American had conquered where countless suppliants of a more or less noble character had gone down to defeat. He asked but one question of her; she asked none of him. The fact that she was the intimate friend and associate of the woman in whose home he met her was sufficient proof of her standing in society, although that would have counted for little so far as Brood was concerned. She was the daughter of a baron; she had spent much of her life in Paris, coming from St Petersburg when a young girl; and she was an orphan with an independent fortune of her own. Her home in Paris, where she had lived with some degree of permanence for the past four or five years, was shared with an estimable, though impoverished, lady of rank, the Countess de Rochambert, of middle age and undeniable qualifications as a chaperon, even among those who are prone to laugh at locksmiths. Such common details as these came to Brood in the natural way and were not derived from any effort on his part to secure information concerning Mlle Lestrange. Like the burned child, he asked a question which harked back to an unforgotten pain. “Have you ever loved a man deeply, devotedly, Yvonne--so deeply that there is pain in the thought of him?” She replied without hesitation. “There is no such man, James. You may be sure of that.” “I am confident that I can hold your love against the future, but no man is vital enough to compete with the past. Love doesn't really die, you know. If a man cannot hold a woman's love against all new-comers, he deserves to lose it. It doesn't follow, however, that he can protect himself against the man who appears out of the past and claims his own.” “You speak as though the past had played you an evil trick,” she said. He did not mince words. “Years ago a man came out of the past and took from me the woman I loved and cherished.” “Your--your wife?” she asked in a voice suddenly lowered. “Yes,” he said quietly. She was silent for a long time. “I wonder at your courage in taking the risk again,” she said. “I think I wonder at it myself,” said he. “No, I am not afraid,” he went on, as if convincing himself that there was no risk. “I shall make you love me to the end, Yvonne. I am not afraid. But why do you not ask me for all the wretched story?”