"You have borne much?"
"Indeed and indeed, yes. What woman has ever borne more!"
"And I?" said he.
"Dear Louis, let us understand each other at last. Of what do you accuse me? Let us, at any rate, know each other's thoughts on this matter, of which each of us is ever thinking."
"I make no new accusation."
"I must protest then against your using words which seem to convey accusation. Since marriages were first known upon earth, no woman has ever been truer to her husband than I have been to you."
"Were you lying to me then at Casalunga when you acknowledged that you had been false to your duties?"
"If I acknowledged that, I did lie. I never said that; but yet I did lie,—believing it to be best for you that I should do so. For your honour's sake, for the child's sake, weak as you are, Louis, I must protest that it was so. I have never injured you by deed or thought."
"And yet you have lied to me! Is a lie no injury;—and such a lie! Emily, why did you lie to me? You will tell me to-morrow that you never lied, and never owned that you had lied."
Though it should kill him, she must tell him the truth now. "You were very ill at Casalunga," she said, after a pause.