She sat down on the sofa; trembling, frightened, sick. If her husband was the slayer of Robert Hunter--as she believed him to be--it was not agreeable to be in the solitary house with him; it was equally disagreeable to have to tell him to go out of it. Ah, but for that terrible belief, what a happy moment this snatch of intercourse might have been to them! this sole first chance for weeks and weeks of being alone, when they might speak together of future plans with a half-hour's freedom. She took her seat on the sofa, scarcely conscious what she did in her sick perplexity. Isaac sat down by her, put his arm round her waist, and would have kissed her. But she drew to the other end of the large sofa with a gesture of evident avoidance, and burst into tears. So he got up and stood before her. "Anna, this must end, one way or the other; it is what I came here to-night to say. The separated condition in which we first lived after our return was bad enough, but that was pleasant compared to what it afterwards became. It is some weeks now since you have allowed me barely to shake you by the hand; never if you could avoid it. Things cannot go on so." She made no reply. Only sat there trembling and crying, her hands before her face. "What have I done to you? Come, Anna, I must have an answer. What have I done to you?" She spoke at last, looking up. In her habit of implicit obedience, there was no help for it; there could be none when the order came from _him_. "Nothing----to me." "To whom, then? What is it?" "Nothing," was all she repeated. "Nothing! Do you repent having married me?" "I don't know." The answer seemed to pain him. He bent his handsome face a little towards her, pushing back impatiently his golden hair, as if the fair bright brow needed coolness. "I thought you loved me, Anna?" "And you know I did. Oh, that is it! The misery would be greater if I loved you less." "Then why do you shun me?" "Is there not a cause why I should?" she asked in a low tone, after a long pause. "_I_ think not. Will you tell me what the cause may be?" She glanced up at him, she looked down, she smoothed unconsciously the silk apron on which her nervous hands rested, but she could not answer. Isaac saw it, and, bending nearer to her, he spoke in a whisper. "Is it connected with that unhappy night--with what took place on the plateau?" "I think you must have known all along that it is." "And you consider it a sufficient reason for shunning me?" "Yes, do not _you?_" "Certainly not." Great though her misery was, passionately though she loved him still, the cool assertion angered her. It gave her a courage to speak that nothing else could have given. "It was a dark crime; the worst crime that the world can know. Does it not lie on your conscience?" "No; I could not hinder it." "Oh, Isaac! Had it been anything else; anything but _murder_, I could have borne it. How you can bear it, and live, I cannot understand."