“You don’t like me; you love me,” Bertram answered with masculine confidence.  “No, you needn’t blush, Frida; you can’t deceive me. . . .  My darling, you love me, and you know I love you.  Why should we two make any secret about our hearts any longer?” He laid his hand on her face again, making it tingle with joy.  “Frida,” he said solemnly, “you don’t love that man you call your husband. . . .  You haven’t loved him for years. . . .  You never really loved him.”

There was something about the mere sound of Bertram’s calm voice that made Frida speak the truth more plainly and frankly than she could ever have spoken it to any ordinary Englishman.  Yet she hung down her head, even so, and hesitated slightly.  “Just at first,” she murmured half-inaudibly, “I used to think I loved him.  At any rate, I was pleased and flattered he should marry me.”

“Pleased and flattered!” Bertram exclaimed, more to himself than to her; “great Heavens, how incredible!  Pleased and flattered by that man!  One can hardly conceive it!  But you’ve never loved him since, Frida.  You can’t look me in the face and tell me you love him.”

“No, not since the first few months,” Frida answered, still hanging her head.  “But, Bertram, he’s my husband, and of course I must obey him.”

“You must do nothing of the sort,” Bertram cried authoritatively.  “You don’t love him at all, and you mustn’t pretend to.  It’s wrong:  it’s wicked.  Sooner or later—­” He checked himself.  “Frida,” he went on, after a moment’s pause, “I won’t speak to you of what I was going to say just now.  I’ll wait a bit till you’re stronger and better able to understand it.  But there must be no more silly talk of farewells between us.  I won’t allow it.  You’re mine now—­a thousand times more truly mine than ever you were Monteith’s; and I can’t do without you.  You must go back to your husband for the present, I suppose,—­the circumstances compel it, though I don’t approve of it; but you must see me again . . . and soon . . . and often, just the same as usual.  I won’t go to your house, of course:  the house is Monteith’s; and everywhere among civilised and rational races the sanctity of the home is rightly respected.  But you yourself he has no claim or right to taboo; and if I can help it, he shan’t taboo you.  You may go home now to-night, dear one; but you must meet me often.  If you can’t come round to my rooms—­ for fear of Miss Blake’s fetich, the respectability of her house—­ we must meet elsewhere, till I can make fresh arrangements.”

Frida gazed up at him in doubt.  “But will it be right, Bertram?” she murmured.

The man looked down into her big eyes in dazed astonishment.  “Why, Frida,” he cried, half-pained at the question, “do you think if it were wrong I’d advise you to do it?  I’m here to help you, to guide you, to lead you on by degrees to higher and truer life.  How can you imagine I’d ask you to do anything on earth unless I felt perfectly sure and convinced it was the very most right and proper conduct?”