“I’m not even married,” she added, the horror of this truth revealing itself in her tones.
“You are,” he asserted sullenly. “I married you...”
“But you couldn’t,” she persisted, “with your wife alive. The law can punish you for bigamy.”
“Do you want the law to punish me?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “That wouldn’t help me. And... there’s the child.”
He frowned.
“You are distressing yourself unnecessarily, Pamela,” he said. “There is no difference really. You felt quite secure until to-day. Your position is as assured now as it ever was. You are more my wife than the woman who wrote that letter. She has a legal right to my name; but we were never mated as you and I are. My first marriage was a bitter mistake which I have ceased to consider long ago. She stands for nothing in my life. You are everything to me—everything. I’d fight to keep you with my last breath.”
“You ought not to have done it,” Pamela said, and wrung her hands. He put his hand over hers and stayed her. “You ought to have left me in peace... What peace is there for me now? Any hour this thing may come out. It’s not our secret,—yours and mine alone.”
“It’s yours and mine and hers,” he said. “She won’t speak.”
“How can you be sure?” Pamela cried passionately. “She told me.”