She desperately told him the truth.  “I am afraid of Penrose,” she answered.

He eyed her with a strange expression of suspicious surprise.  “Why are you afraid of Penrose?”

It was no time to run the risk of irritating him.  The torment of the Voice had returned in the past night.  The old gnawing remorse of the fatal day of the duel had betrayed itself in the wild words that had escaped him, when he sank into a broken slumber as the morning dawned.  Feeling the truest pity for him, she was still resolute to assert herself against the coming interference of Penrose.  She tried her ground by a dangerous means—­the means of an indirect reply.

“I think you might have told me,” she said, “that Mr. Penrose was a Catholic priest.”

He looked down again at his book.  “How did you know Penrose was a Catholic priest?”

“I had only to look at the direction on your letters to him.”

“Well, and what is there to frighten you in his being a priest?  You told me at the Loring’s ball that you took an interest in Penrose because I liked him.”

“I didn’t know then, Lewis, that he had concealed his profession from us.  I can’t help distrusting a man who does that.”

He laughed—­not very kindly.  “You might as well say you distrust a man who conceals that he is an author, by writing an anonymous book.  What Penrose did, he did under orders from his superior—­and, moreover, he frankly owned to me that he was a priest.  If you blame anybody, you had better blame me for respecting his confidence.”

She drew back from him, hurt by the tone in which he spoke to her.  “I remember the time, Lewis,” she said, “when you would have been more indulgent toward my errors—­even if I am wrong.”

That simple appeal touched his better nature.  “I don’t mean to be hard on you, Stella,” he answered.  “It is a little irritating to hear you say that you distrust the most devoted and most affectionate friend that man ever had.  Why can’t I love my wife, and love my friend, too?  You don’t know, when I am trying to get on with my book, how I miss the help and sympathy of Penrose.  The very sound of his voice used to encourage me.  Come, Stella, give me a kiss—­and let us, as the children say, make it up!”

He rose from his writing-table.  She met him more than half way, and pressed all her love—­and perhaps a little of her fear—­on his lips.  He returned the kiss as warmly as it was given; and then, unhappily for both of them, he went back to the subject.

“My own love,” he said, “try to like my friend for my sake; and be tolerant of other forms of Christianity besides the form which happens to be yours.”

Her smiling lips closed; she turned from him.  With the sensitive selfishness of a woman’s love, she looked on Penrose as a robber who had stolen the sympathies which should have been wholly hers.  As she moved away, her quick observation noticed the open book on the desk, with notes and lines in pencil on the margin of the page.  What had Romayne been reading which interested him in that way?  If he had remained silent, she would have addressed the inquiry to him openly.  But he was hurt on his side by the sudden manner of her withdrawal from him.  He spoke—­and his tone was colder than ever.