"You have a son."
He reeled as though he had been struck, and the silence between them was as the silence of tragedy.
"You see," she continued, "I am bound to ask you to lift the curtain a little. Fate or instinct, or whatever you may like to call it, has led me a little way. I am not afraid to know. I have seen too much of life to be a hard judge. But you must hold out your hand and take me a little further."
"I cannot."
She held him tightly. Her voice trembled a little. "Dear, you must. I am not an exacting woman, and I love you too well to be a hard judge of anything you might have to tell me. Ignorance is the only thing which I cannot bear. Remember how greatly you are changed, you are almost a stranger to me in some of your moods. I could not have you wandering off into worlds of which I knew nothing. Sit down by my side and talk to me. I will ask no questions. You shall tell me your own way, and what you wish to leave out—leave it out. Come, is this so hard a task?"
He seemed frozen into inanition. His face was like the cast of a dead man's. His voice was cold and hopeless.
"The key," he said, "is gone. I shall never seek for it, I shall never find it. I have known what madness is, and I am afraid. Shall we go into the hall? I fancy that they are serving tea."
She looked at him, half terrified, half amazed.
"You mean this as final?" she said, deliberately. "You refuse to offer any explanation, the explanation which common decency even would require of these things?"
"I expected too much," he answered. "I know it very well. Forgive me, and let us forget."