“He will do it,” I said; “he will come again and again. Do you recognise that?”

“Yes.”

“How will you answer him?”

She did not speak, but I felt a little tremor run through the hands I held.

“Why,” I said, “do you not make a clean breast of it to your husband? If I know him, he would not judge that imposition hardly.”

“No,” she whispered. “It is not him I fear.”

“Who, then? Not me? Let him know me for what I am, for all I care.”

“Richard!”

“Why, I believe he’d think the better of us both for it.”

“Be as cruel to me as you will.”