And though she knew that every man's private opinion regarding his own wife was the same, she took heart at his words of praise, and laughed archly. They two were that novel sight "under the sun," a pair of married lovers. Why need he have gone back to the forbidden subject? Ah! why have we always "done that which we ought not to have done?" Because he wanted to make himself miserable, I suppose. There is no other reason I can assign for his persistence; and, as for that, there is no reason whatever in a jealous man. "He is simply jealous for he is jealous," and where Shakespeare could not find a reason for a thing, how can I? "Gracie, may I ask you one question?" "You may--certainly." "And will you answer it truthfully? "If I answer it at all," she gravely made answer, "it must needs be truthfully, for I could not reply to you otherwise. But why ask a question at all? I do not care to question you of your past; why should you question me of mine? Let past and future alone, Paul. The present only is ours--let us enjoy it." And heedless of the warning shadow that fell across her pathetic face, he persevered: "Only tell me this, my precious wife. This Bruce Conway, who went away to Europe to learn that he loved you, and came back to tell you so. Gracie, in that past time when you knew him--before you ever knew me--did you--tell me truly, mind--did you ever love him?" The question she had dreaded and shrunk from all the time! She knew it would come, and now that it had, what could she say? How easy it would have been to confess the truth to a less passionate and jealous mind. It was no sin, not even a fault in her, and she was not afraid to tell him save with the moral cowardice that makes one dread the necessary utterance of words that must inflict pain. What harm was there in that dreamy passion that had cast its glamour over a few months of her girlhood? It was unkind in him to probe her heart so deeply. She dared not own the truth to him if its telling were to make him unhappy! And along with this feeling there was another--the natural shrinking of a proud woman from laying bare the hidden secrets of her soul, pure though they be, to mortal sight. A woman does not want to tell her husband, the man who loves her, and believes her irresistible to all, that another man has been proof against her charms, that the first pure waters of love's perennial fountain had gushed at the touch of another, who let the tide flow on unheeding and uncaring, and a man has no business to ask it. But where does the line of man's "little brief authority" cross its boundaries? We have never found out yet. It is left, perhaps, for some of the fair and curious ones of our sex who are "strong-minded" in their "day and generation" to solve that interesting problem. So, Gracie, debarred by confession by so many and grave considerations, in desperation, parried the question.