“But I never meant you to discover it.  Not for yourself, like this.  I couldn’t have forgiven myself—­after what you told me.  I meant to have told you myself—­that evening—­but my poor little sister promised me that she would.  She said it would be easier for you to hear it from her.  Of course I believed her.  There were things she could say that I couldn’t.”

“She never said a word.”

“Are you sure?”

“Perfectly.  Except—­yes—­she did say——­”

It was coming back to her now.

“Do you mind telling me exactly what she said?”

“N—­no.  She made me promise that if I ever found things in you that I didn’t understand, or that I didn’t like——­”

“Well—­what did she make you promise?”

“That I wouldn’t be hard on you.  Because, she said, you’d had such a miserable life.”

“Poor Edith!  So that was the nearest she could get to it.  Things you didn’t understand and didn’t like!”

“I didn’t know what she meant.”

“Of course you didn’t.  Who could?  But I’m sorry to say that Edith made me pretty well believe you did.”

He was silent a while, trying to fathom the reason of his sister’s strange duplicity.  Apparently he gave it up.

“You can’t be a brute to a poor little woman with a bad spine,” said he; “but I’m not going to forgive Edith for that.”

Anne flamed through her pallor.  “For what?” she said.  “For not having had more courage than yourself?  Think what you put on her.”

“I didn’t.  She took it on herself.  Edith’s got courage enough for anybody.  She would never admit that her spine released her from all moral obligations.  But I suppose she meant well.”

The spirit of the grey, cold morning seemed to have settled upon Anne.  She gazed sternly out over the eastern sea.  Preoccupied with what he considered Edith’s perfidy, he failed to understand his wife’s silence and her mood.

“Edith’s very fond of you.  You won’t let this make any difference between you and her?”

“Between her and me it can make no difference.  I am very fond of Edith.”

“But the fact remains that you married me under false pretences?  Is that what you mean?”

“You may certainly put it that way.”

“I understand your point of view completely.  I wish you could understand mine.  When Edith said there were things she could have told you that I couldn’t, she meant that there were extenuating circumstances.”

“They would have made no difference.”

“Excuse me, they make all the difference.  But, of course, there’s no extenuation for deception.  Therefore, if you insist on putting it that way—­if—­if it has made the whole thing intolerable to you, it seems to me that perhaps I ought, don’t you know, to release you from your obligations——­”