“Juliette!” Ilam stepped backwards. Then he stopped. “Juliette,” he repeated, “I swear to you most solemnly that I have never tried to kill anyone.” “Dearest, you shouldn’t have said that!” she remonstrated. “You shouldn’t have sworn to me. It is an insult to my love. Do you imagine that I believed Carlos for a single instant? Do you imagine it?” She looked at him proudly, gloriously. “How splendid you are!” muttered Josephus Ilam, son of the soda-water manufacturer. The admiration was drawn out of him. He had not guessed that women could be so fine. And then he perceived that he, too, must be splendid, that he must be worthy of her; and so he proceeded: “Nevertheless, it is true that I did bury a man in the grounds a few nights ago.” The perspiration stood afresh on his brow as he made the confession. “You!” she murmured. “I thought he was dead,” said Ilam, speaking quickly. “I thought I should be accused of his murder. And so I--the fact is, I was mad. I was off my head. I must have been. Until yesterday I actually fancied I was being haunted by his ghost. Yes! me! me--thinking a thing like that! But I did; and yesterday I was in that big crush, during the shower, in the Court of the Exposition Palace, and he, too, was in the crowd. I saw him; I touched him; he didn’t see me, thank Heaven! Then I knew that what I had buried was not a corpse.” “Who is this man?” asked Juliette calmly. “My angel!” said Ilam, driven to poetry by the stress of his emotion, “you mustn’t inquire; there are some things I can’t tell you--at least, not yet. When we are married, when matters are settled a bit, I will tell you everything, but not now.” “Why not now?” she persisted. “Look here,” he said, “if you persist I shall simply go and kill myself.” She paused. “My friend,” she resumed, “you do not love me as much as I love you. The measure of love is trust, and you do not trust me completely.” “I love you in my way,” said Ilam doggedly; “men are not like women.” “That is true,” she admitted philosophically. “I would tell you everything if I was free to do so,” he said. “Dearest”--she addressed him in quite a new tone--“you know something about those attacks on Carlos’ life.” She spoke with an air of absolute certainty. “I have had nothing to do with them,” he said. “But you know something about them.” “Why do you think so?” “I can tell from your manner,” she said triumphantly. “I know nothing for certain, nothing precise,” said Ilam--“nothing that I can tell you--nothing that I dare tell you.” “Dearest,” she remarked, with a faint acidity, “it seems to me that you have come here to-day in order not to tell me things.” He deprecated her tone with an appealing gesture. “I can tell you, at any rate, this,” he said, “that your brother’s life is no longer in danger--of that I am sure.” “You are atoning,” she smiled. “Which is more than can be said of my life,” Ilam proceeded, not heeding her smile.