She resolved on a bold step—­the audacity of that perfect candor she had always taken as a guide.

“I don’t know that one could call it that,” she said, quietly.

He drew a quick inward breath, clinching his teeth, but keeping his fixed smile.

“But you don’t know that one couldn’t.”

“I can’t define what I felt at all.”

“It was just enough,” he pursued, in his bantering tone, “to keep you—­looking for him back—­as you told me—­that day.”

She lifted her eyes in a swift glance of reproach.

“It was that—­then.”

“But it’s more—­now.  Isn’t it?”

She met him squarely.

“I don’t think you’ve any right to ask.”

He laughed aloud, somewhat shrilly.

“That’s good!—­considering we’re to be man and wife.”

“We’re to be man and wife on a very distinct understanding to which I’m perfectly loyal.  I mean to be loyal to it always—­and to you.  I shall give you everything you ever asked for.  If there are some things—­one thing in particular—­out of my power to give you, I’ve said so from the first, and you’ve told me you could do without them.  If what I can’t give you I’ve given to some one else—­because—­because—­I couldn’t help it—­that’s my secret, and I claim the right to guard it.”

They faced one another across the table piled with ornate silver.  He had not lost his smile.

“You’ve the merit of being clear,” was his only comment.

“You force me to be clear,” she declared, with heightened color, “and a little angry.  When you asked me to be your wife—­long ago—­I told you there were certain conditions I could never fulfil—­and you waived them.  On that ground I’m ready to meet all your wishes, and make you a good wife to the utmost of my power.  I’m eager to do it—­because I honor and respect you as women don’t always honor and respect the very men they love.  I’ve told Norrie Ford, and I repeat it to you, that after seeing him go free and restored to his place among men, the most ardent desire of my life is to make you happy.  I’m perfectly true; I’m perfectly sincere.  What more can you ask of me?”

He looked at her searchingly, while he thought hard and rapidly.  He could not complain that the bars were up and the blinds drawn any longer.  On the contrary, she had let him see into the recesses of her life with a clarity that startled him, as pure truth startles often.  As he sat musing, his pretence at cynicism fell from him, together with something of his furbished air of youth.  She saw him grow graver, grayer, older, under her very eyes, and was moved with compunction—­with compassion.  Her face still aglow and her hands clasped in her lap, she leaned to him across the table, speaking in the rich, low voice that always thrilled him.

“What I feel for you is ... something so much like ... love ... that you would never have known the difference ... if you hadn’t wrung it from me.”