All through the dark hours she lay revolving the matter, questioning this way and that, bound hand and foot, yet not daring to contemplate the only sane means at her disposal of obtaining freedom.  To tell her husband the simple truth, to throw herself unreservedly upon his generosity, to beg his forgiveness and his help—­these were the things she could not do.  As a matter of fact the truth had been so magnified by her fevered fancy that it had begun to appear monstrous even in her own eyes.  Those far-off happenings at Valpre had become a dream with a nightmare ending.  Not even Aunt Philippa could have distorted them to a more exaggerated semblance of evil.  And to go to her husband now with such a story was utterly beyond Chris’s powers of accomplishment.  She lacked the courage to speak with simplicity and candour, and she was painfully aware that to give a halting account of the matter would be infinitely more dangerous than to keep silence.  Already her husband’s faith in her veracity had been shaken.  Was it likely that he would accept unquestioning her assurance that this matter, which she had rigorously suppressed for so long and which she only imparted to him now under compulsion, was in reality one of trivial importance?  Would he believe her?  Had she ever fostered his belief in her?  Could he in reason do so even if he desired?

Moreover, there was another obstacle.  There was Bertrand.  Though he had offered to speak for her, though he had desired to explain all, and though she knew that Trevor’s faith in him was absolute, yet the presence of Bertrand in itself made candour impossible.  Why this should be she did not know.  It was a problem which she had not attempted to solve.  But the fact remained.  She dreaded unspeakably the possibility of having to describe the intimacy that had existed between herself and Bertrand in the old, free, Valpre days.  She dreaded the keen searching of the grey eyes that, if they sought long enough, were bound to find her soul, and not only to find, but to enter it, to penetrate to its most hidden corner, and to draw out into the full light of day one of her most sacred possessions.  She felt that she could not bear this probing.  The very thought of it was horrible to her, and in connection with it the steady scrutiny of her husband’s eyes became almost a thing abhorrent.  Vaguely she knew, without realizing, that she cherished deep in that inmost shrine something which he must never see, something that it would be agony to show him, something that even now gnawed secretly at her quivering heart.  She always shrank from his direct look, though she would not have him know it.  The calm, level gaze frightened her, she knew not why.  Perhaps the secret of all her fear of him lay hidden in this problem that she dared not face.

No, she could not endure a full revelation of the truth.  Bertrand had declared that Mordaunt could not discover what was non-existent, but it was not this that Chris feared.  It was something infinitely more terrible, a floating suspicion that might harden into actual fact at any moment.