"You stare at me, Mr. Melray, as if I were some monster of wickedness," she said with a bitter smile. "Perhaps, before you open your lips to reproach me or to give utterance to words such as, later on, you might see reason to regret, it may be as well that you should be enlightened about certain matters as to which at present you are wholly ignorant. If you will condescend to listen to me, I will promise to be as little tedious as possible, and that, on this occasion at least, you shall hear from me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!" "Go on," said Robert in a voice that was hardly raised above a whisper. But Denia did not at once respond to the invitation. It was neither shyness nor hesitation that held her back; the former, indeed, was a quality of which she knew nothing; she was merely considering in what terms it behoved her to couch her version of what could no longer be kept back. "It was my husband who, soon after our marriage introduced Richard Dyson to me," at length she began, her blue eyes fixed calmly on Robert Melray's face. Before long he began to spend three or four evenings a week in the drawing-room, and by the time I had been half a year married it was evident to me that (not to mince my words) he had either fallen in love with me or was wishful of making me believe that he had done so. He was young and handsome and had a certain fascinating way with him; he played and sang charmingly, or so it seemed to me. I liked and respected my husband--no one could help doing that--and I strove to do my duty by him as a true wife should do; but I did not love him. Love is a very different sentiment from that which I experienced for James Melray. Is it, then, greatly to be wondered at if, at times, my heart could not help fluttering a little under the ardent glances of Richard Dyson? But, for all that, when, one day, he ventured to whisper certain words in my ear such as he had no right to whisper in the ear of any married woman, I was not slow in giving him to understand what an egregious piece of folly he had been guilty of. So strongly, indeed, did I resent the liberty he had taken that he never ventured to err in the same way again. And so matters went on as before. I continued to do my duty by my husband and guarded my feelings to the best of my ability; but, having promised that this shall be a full and frank confession, let me at once admit that deep down in my heart a germ of love lay perdu, and that it was only my strong sense of wifely obligation and the remembrance of all I owed my husband, which kept it there, frozen and half torpid, like a bulb buried deep under the snow.