“Then you must not ask impossible things,” she answered.
Then Bernadine took the plunge. He became suddenly very grave.
“Sophia,” he said, “I am keeping a great secret from you and I can do it no longer. When you speak to me of your husband you drive me mad. If I believed that you really loved him, I would go away and leave it to chance whether or not you ever discovered the truth. As it is—”
“Well?” she interposed breathlessly.
“As it is,” he continued, “I am going to tell you now. Your husband has deceived you—he is deceiving you every moment.”
She looked at him incredulously.
“You mean that there is another woman?”
Bernadine shook his head.
“Worse than that,” he answered. “Your husband stole even your love under false pretenses. You think that his life is a strange one, that his nerves have broken down, that he flies from place to place for distraction, for change of scene. It is not so. He left Rome, he left Nice, he left Paris, for one and the same reason. He left because he was in peril of his life. I know little of your history, but I know as much as this. If ever a man deserved the fate from which he flees, your husband deserves it.”
“You are mad,” she faltered.