He was not disposed to admit that she could conceal anything from him, and he questioned her.

“What are you keeping from me?”

“How can you suppose that I should keep anything from you?”

“Well, what is the matter?  You know, do you not, that I read all your thoughts in your eyes?  Very well your eyes speak when your lips are silent.”

“I have a request to make of you, a prayer.”

“Why do you not tell me?”

“Because I do not dare.”

“Yet it does not seem to me that I show a disposition to make you believe that I could refuse you anything.”

“It is just that which is the cause of my embarrassment and reserve; I fear to pain you at the moment when I would show you all the gratitude and love in my heart.”

“If you are going to give me pain, it is better not to make me wait.”

She hesitated; then, before an impatient gesture, she decided to speak.

“I wish to ask you how you mean to be married?”

He looked at her in surprise.

“But, like every one else!”

“Every one?” she asked, persistently.

“Is there any other way of being married?”

“Yes.”

“I do not in the least understand this manner of asking conundrums; if you are alluding to a fashionable custom of which I know nothing, say so frankly.  That will not wound me, since I am the first to declare that I know nothing of it.  What do you wish?”

She felt his irritation increase, and yet she could not decide to say what she wished.

“I have begun badly,” she said.  “I should have told you at first that you will always find in me a wife who will respect your ideas and beliefs, who will never permit herself to judge you, and still less to seek to contend with them or to modify them.  That you feel, do you not, is neither a part of my nature nor of my love?”

“Conclude!” he said impatiently.

“I think, then,” she said with timid hesitation, “that you will not say that I fail in respect to your ideas in asking that our marriage take place in church.”

“But that was my intention.”

“Truly!” she exclaimed.  “O dearest!  And I feared to offend you!”

“Why should you think it would offend me?” he asked, smiling.

“You consent to go to confession?”

Instantly the smile in his eyes and on his lips was replaced by a gleam of fury.

“And why should I not go to confession?” he demanded.

“But—­”

“Do you suppose that I can be afraid to confess?  Why do you suppose that?  Tell me why?”

He looked at her with eyes that pierced to her heart, as if they would read her inmost thoughts.

Stupefied by this access of fury, which burst forth without any warning, since he had smilingly replied to her request for a religious marriage, she could find nothing to say, not understanding how the simple word “confess” could so exasperate him.  And yet she could not deceive herself:  is was indeed this word and no other that put him in this state.