He answered her with great steadiness; his eyes met hers unwaveringly.
"Of that which happened at Valpré," he said.
She gazed at him in growing consternation. "Bertie, how—are you mad?—how could I tell him that?"
"With your permission, I will tell him," he said resolutely.
But she cried out at that, almost as if he had hurt her: "Oh no, no, never! Why should he know now? Don't you see how impossible it is? If I had ever meant to tell him, it ought to have been long ago."
"Yes," said Bertrand.
The quietness of his tone only agitated her still further. His evident determination terrified her. In that moment all her fear of her husband rose to towering proportions, a monster she dared not even contemplate. She clasped Bertrand's arm between her hands in wild, unreasoning supplication.
"Oh, you must not—you shall not! Bertie, you won't, will you? Promise me you won't—promise me! He wouldn't understand. He would want to know why I had never told him before. He would—he would—"
"Ah! but I would explain," Bertrand protested gently.
"But you couldn't! He would ask questions—questions I couldn't possibly answer. If he didn't say them he would look them. And his eyes are so terribly keen. They frighten me. They see—everything."
"But, chérie," he reasoned, "they could not see what is not there. You have nothing to hide from him. You have no shame. Why, then, have you fear?"