"I have been keeping secrets from you all our wedded life together,
Mary."
She uttered a little sound of dismay—of grief. Then she said, with an assumption of an easy manner:
"And if you have, Shawn, well—they must be things I had no right to know. There are reticences I can respect. Other people's secrets might be involved…."
"That was it," he said eagerly. "There was another person's secret involved. I kept it back when it would have rested my heart to tell you."
"I shall not ask you to tell me now unless the time has come to tell.
I can trust you, Shawn."
"The time may have come," he answered, drawing down her caressing hand to kiss it. "Another man might have told it to win you the more completely, Mary. He might have found justification for betraying his friend. I thought at one time you must have cared for Terence Comerford and not for me. It was the strangest thing in the world that you should have cared for me. Terence was so splendid, so big, so handsome and pleasant with every one. How could you have preferred me before him? And I knew he wasn't fit for you, Mary. I knew there was another girl,—yet I held my peace. It tortured me, to keep silence. And there was the other girl to be thought of. He owed reparation to the other girl. But his mother had her heart set on you for a daughter-in-law. I believe he would have done the right thing if he had lived,—in spite of all it would have meant to his mother. He had a good heart,—but—oh, my God!—he should not have lifted his eyes to you when there was that other poor girl!"
He spoke in a voice as though he were being tortured, and her caressing hand felt the cold sweat ooze out on his forehead. How sensitive he was! How he grieved for his friend after all those years!
"He did not really lift his eyes to me as you say," she said. "His mother wanted it. He never did. A woman is not deceived."
"But you cared for him—to some extent?" he asked jealously.
"I never cared for any man but one," she answered. "I used to think you would never ask me. Perhaps you never would have only that I came to you when you were so broken down after your illness; and you had not strength enough to resist me."