“Of what I might let out--if they hadn’t always stopped me. That’s my torture now; that I let them stop me. It always will be. I shall go over it and over it; I shall never be sure I oughtn’t to have told them.” “Told _what_?” “Why--what you know.” She looked up at him, surprised, and saw that a faint veil had fallen over the light in his eyes. His face had grown pale and she felt that he was holding her hands without knowing that he held them. “I know you’ve been most unhappy ... most cruelly treated....” He straightened his shoulders and looked at her. “That there’ve been things in the past that you regret ... must regret....” He paused, as if waiting for her to speak; then, with a visible effort, went on: “In all those lonely years--when you were so friendless--I’ve naturally supposed you were not always ... alone....” She freed herself gently and moved away from him. “Is that all?” She was conscious in him of a slowly dawning surprise. “All--what else is there?” “What else? The shame ... the misery ... the truth....” For a moment he seemed hardly to take in the words she was flinging at him. He looked like a man who has not yet felt the pain of the wound he has received. “I certainly don’t know--of any shame,” he answered slowly. “Then you don’t know anything. You don’t know any more than the others.” She had almost laughed out as she said it. He seemed to be struggling with an inconceivable idea: an idea for which there were no terms in his vocabulary. His lips moved once or twice before he became articulate. “You mean: some sort of complicity--some sort of secret--between you and--and Anne’s husband?” She made a faint gesture of assent. “Something--” he still wavered over it--“something you ought to have told Anne before ... before she....” Abruptly he broke off, took a few steps away from her, and came back. “Not you--not you and that man?” She was silent. The silence continued. He stood without moving, turned away from her. She had dropped down on the foot of the lounge, and sat gazing at the pattern of the carpet. He put his hands over his eyes. Presently, hearing him move, she looked up. He had uncovered his eyes and was staring about the room as if he had never seen it before, and could not remember what had brought him there. His face had shrunk and yellowed; he seemed years older.