"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 pretences. 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 went 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.
"No, I am sane," he went on. "It is you who are mad, not to have understood. Your husband goes ever in fear of his life. His real name is one branded with ignominy throughout the world. The man whom you have married, to whom you are so scrupulously faithful, is the man who sent your father to death and your brothers to Siberia."
"Father Paul!" she screamed.
"You have lived with him; you are his wife!" Bernadine declared.