She looked up, and, looking, saw his eyes filled with such an intensity of misery as touched and startled her. He made a slight gesture of appeal.
'For God's sake, don't speak to me like this!' he whispered; 'You torture me!'
She still gazed at him, half wondering, half fearing. He was silent for a few minutes, then resumed slowly in quiet tones.
'You are so candid in your own nature that you can neither wear a disguise yourself nor see when it is worn by others,' he said; 'and just as you have never suspected your husband of infidelity, you have never suspected me—of love. I suppose you, with the majority, have looked upon me as merely the popular mime of the moment, feigning passions I cannot feel, and dividing what purely human emotions my life allows me still to enjoy, among the light wantons of the stage, who rejoice in a multitude of lovers. It is possible you would never believe me capable of a deep and lasting love for any woman?'
He paused,—and Delicia spoke softly and with great gentleness, moved by the strength of her own grief to compassionate his, whatever it might be.
'Indeed I would, Mr Valdis,' she said earnestly. 'I am quite sure you have a strong and steadfast nature, and that with you it would be a case of "once love, love always."'
He met her eyes fully.
'Thank you,' he said in low accents; 'I am glad you do me that justice. It moves me to make full confession, and to tell you what I thought would never be told. Others, I fear, have guessed my secret, but you—you have never seen it, never guessed it. You are not vain enough to realise your own charm; you live like an angel in a land of divine dreams, and so you have never known that I—I—'
But she suddenly started away from him, her eyes filling with tears, her hands thrust out to keep him back from her.
'No, no,' she cried, 'you must not say it; you must not!'