"And there is no one else." Bernadine asked softly, "who can claim even the smallest place in your heart?" "Monsieur," the woman begged, "you must not ask me that. I think that you had better go away." Bernadine stood quite still for several moments. It was the climax towards which he had steadfastly guided the course of this mild intrigue. "Madame," he declared, "You must not send me away! You shall not!" She held out her hand. "Then you must not ask impossible things," she answered. Then Bernadine took the plunge. He became suddenly very grave. "Sophia," he said, "I am keeping a great secret from you, and I can do it no longer. When you speak to me of your husband you drive me mad. If I believed that really you loved him, I would go away and leave it to chance whether or not you ever discovered the truth. As it is----" "Well?" she interposed breathlessly. "As it is," he continued, "I am going to tell you now. Your husband has deceived you; he is deceiving you every moment." She looked at him incredulously. "You mean that there is another woman?" Bernadine shook his head. "Worse than that," he answered. "Your husband stole even your love under false pretences. You think that his life is a strange one; that his nerves have broken down; that he flies from place to place for distraction, for change of scene. It is not so. He left Rome, he left Nice, he left Paris for one and the same reason. He left because he went in peril of his life. I know little of your history, but I know as much as this: If ever a man deserved the fate from which he flees, your husband deserves it!" "You are mad!" she faltered. "No, I am sane," he went on. "It is you who are mad, not to have understood. Your husband goes ever in fear of his life. His real name is one branded with ignominy throughout the world. The man whom you have married, to whom you are so scrupulously faithful, is the man who sent your father to death and your brothers to Siberia." "Father Paul!" she screamed. "You have lived with him; you are his wife!" Bernadine declared. The colour had left her cheeks; her eyes, with their pencilled brows, were fixed in an almost ghastly stare; her breath was coming in uneven gasps. She looked at him in silent terror. "It is not true!" she cried at last. "It cannot be true!" "Sophia," he said, "you can prove it for yourself. I know a little of your husband and his doings. Does he not carry always with him a black box which he will not allow out of his sight?" "Always," she assented. "How did you know? By night his hand rests upon it. By day, if he goes out, it is in my charge." "Fetch it now," Bernadine directed. "I will prove my words." She did not hesitate for a moment. She disappeared into the inner room and came back after only a few moments' absence, carrying a black leather dispatch-box. "You have the key?" he asked. "Yes," she answered, looking at him and trembling; "but I dare not--oh, I dare not open it!"