"I do not think so," he returned, "at least, not entirely. I know that there have frequently been times when you have regretted your marriage. For that you were not to blame." He paused an instant. "Naomi," he said, a new note in his voice, "I think I am right in believing that, notwithstanding this regret, you do not in your heart wish to leave me?" She quivered, and hid her face in silence. He waited a few seconds, and finally went on as if she had answered in the affirmative. "That being so, I have a foundation on which to build. I would not ask of you anything which you feel unable to grant. But there is only one way for us to get out of the circle that I can see. Will you take it with me, Naomi? Shall we go away together, and leave this miserable estrangement behind us?" His voice was low and tender. Yet she felt instinctively that he had not found it easy to expose his most sacred reserve thus. She moved convulsively, trying to answer him, trying for several unworthy moments to accept in silence the shelter his generosity had offered her. But her efforts failed, for she had not been moulded for deception; and this new weapon of his had cut her to the heart. Heavy, shaking sobs overcame her. "Hush!" he said. "Hush! I never dreamed you felt it so." "Ah, you don't know me!" she whispered. "I--I am not what you think me. I have disobeyed you, deceived you, cheated you!" Humbled to the earth, she made piteous, halting confession before her tyrant. "I was at the masquerade tonight. I waltzed--and afterwards went into the maze--in the dark--with a stranger--who made love to me. I never--meant you--to know." Silence succeeded her words, and, as she waited for him to rise and spurn her, she wondered how she had ever brought herself to utter them. But she would not have recalled them even then. He moved at last, but not as she had anticipated. He gathered the tumbled hair back from her face, and, bending over her, he spoke. Even in her agony of apprehension she noted the curious huskiness of his voice. "And yet you told me," he said. "Why?" She could not answer him, nor could she raise her face. He was not angry, she knew now; but yet she felt that she could not meet his eyes. There was a short silence, then he spoke again, close to her ear: "You need not have told me, Naomi." The words amazed her. With a great start of bewilderment she lifted her head and looked at him. He put his hands upon her shoulders. She thought she saw a smile hovering about his lips, but it was of a species she had never seen there before. "Because," he explained gently, "I knew." She stared at him in wonder, scarcely breathing, the tears all gone from her eyes. "You--knew!" she said slowly, at last.