“Yes?” said Chris eagerly.

He put a pen into her hand and opened the cheque-book.

She slipped her arm round his neck.  “Trevor, I—­I don’t feel as if you ought.  I—­of course I—­knew you would make me an allowance, but—­but—­you ought not to give me a lot of money all my own.”

“My darling,” he said gently, “don’t forget that you are my wife, will you?”

She smiled a little shyly.  “Do you know—­I had forgotten—­quite!”

He put his arm about her as she sat.  “You must try to remember it, dear, because it’s rather important.  I know I might have made you an allowance, but I prefer that you should be independent.  Only, Chris, I am going to ask a promise of you; and I want you to make it at the very beginning of our life together.  That is why I have spoken on our wedding-night.”

“Yes?” whispered Chris.

She had begun to tremble a little, and he pressed her to him reassuringly.  “I want you to promise me that you will never run into debt, that if for any cause you find that you have not enough of your own you will come to me at once and tell me.”

He spoke with grave kindness, watching her face the while.  But Chris’s eyes did not meet his own.  She was rolling the pen he had given her up and down the blotting-pad with much absorption.

“Is it a promise, Chris?” he asked at length.

She threw him a nervous glance and nodded.

He laid his hand upon hers and held it still.  “Chris, have you any debts now?”

She was silent.

“My dear,” he said, “don’t be afraid of me!”

There was that in his voice that moved her to the depths; she could not have said why.  Impulsively, almost passionately, she went into his arms.

“I won’t!” she said.  “I won’t!  Trevor, I—­I’ve been a little beast!  That money you gave me on my birthday I didn’t do—­what you meant me to do with it.  I just—­spent it.  I don’t know how.  And then—­when you asked about it that night—­I didn’t dare to tell you, and I haven’t dared since.  I just let you think it was all right—­when it wasn’t.  Oh, Trevor, don’t be angry—­don’t be angry!”

“I am not angry,” he said.

“Not really?  But how you must despise me!  It’s just the way of the Wyndhams.  We all do it.  Trevor, why did you make me tell you?”

“My dear child,” he said, “you must tell me these things.  It is your only possibility of happiness, and mine also.  Chris, never keep anything from me, for Heaven’s sake!  Don’t you know that I trust you?”

“I don’t deserve it!” sobbed Chris, clinging faster.  “You don’t know how bad I am!”

“Hush!” he said, with a restraining hand upon her head.  “You have told me everything now?”

“Oh no, I haven’t!” she whispered.  “There are crowds of things I couldn’t even begin to tell you.  I have always warned you how it would be.  I always said—­”

Her agitation was increasing, and her words became inaudible.  He saw that her nerves had given way under the long day’s strain, and firmly, with infinite gentleness, he put a stop to further discussion of a subject that threatened to upset her seriously.