“And one you cannot answer?”

He bent his head.

“And one I cannot answer.”

Very slowly she picked up her wraps.

“Thank you,” she said unsteadily.  “I’ll—­I’ll go now.”

He laid his hand deliberately on the door-handle.

“No,” he said.  “No, you won’t go.  I’ve heard what you have to say; now you’ll listen to me.  Good God, Diana!” he continued passionately.  “Do you think I’m going to stand quietly by and see our happiness wrecked?”

“I don’t see how you can prevent it,” she said dully.

“I?  No; I can do nothing.  But you can.  Diana, beloved, have faith in me!  I can’t explain those things to you—­not now.  Some day, please God, I shall be able to, but till that day comes—­trust me!” There was a depth of supplication and entreaty in his tone, but it left her unmoved.  She felt frozen—­passionless.

“Do you mean—­do you mean that Adrienne, your name, everything, is all part of—­of what you can’t tell me?  Part of—­the shadow?”

He was silent a moment.  Then he answered steadily:—­

“Yes.  That much I may tell you.”

She put up her hand and pushed back her hair impatiently from her forehead.

“I can’t understand it . . .  I can’t understand it,” she muttered.

“Dear, must one understand—­to love? . . .  Can’t you have faith?”

His eyes, those blue eyes of his which could be by turns so fierce, so unrelenting, and—­did she not know it to her heart’s undoing?—­so unutterably tender, besought her.  But, for once, they awakened no response.  She felt cold—­quite cold and indifferent.

“No, Max,” she answered wearily.  “I don’t think I can.  You ask me to believe that there is need for you to see so much of Adrienne.  At first you said it was because of the play.  Now you say it has to do with this—­this thing I may not know. . . .  I’m afraid I can’t believe it.  I think a man’s wife should come first—­first of anything.  I’ve tried—­oh, I’ve tried not to mind when you left me so often to go to Adrienne.  I used to tell myself that it was only on account of the play.  I tried to believe it, because—­because I loved you so.  But”—­with a bitter little smile—­“I don’t think I ever really believed it—­I only cheated myself. . . .  There’s something else, too—­the shadow.  Baroni knows what it is—­and Olga Lermontof.  Only I—­your wife—­I know nothing.”

She paused, as though expecting some reply, but Max remained silent, his arms folded across his chest, his head a little bent.

“I was only a child when you married me, Max,” she went on presently.  “I didn’t realise what it meant for a husband to have some secret business which he cannot tell his wife.  But I know now what it means.  It’s merely an excuse to be always with another woman—­”

In a stride Max was beside her, his eyes blazing, his hands gripping her shoulders with a clasp that hurt her.