"It is nothing to which I am not well used," he said. "The same old wretched story. I have never told it in so many words. I am too ashamed to tell. You know it, well enough. Who is there that does not know?"
She turned on him a face that startled him, who knew it well, and had learnt by heart, he thought, its many changes.
"Why do you not kill her?" she said.
"Sh-sh-sh!" he whispered, surprised and reproving.
Her vivid face was aflame with passion; almost, it seemed, with hate.
"It would be no crime," she said. "Do you think God wants His world so cumbered? Why should your life, other people's lives, be destroyed? Are you to bear a burden like that for ever?"
"Sh-sh-sh!" he whispered again.
He put a hand upon her arm, and gently turned her with him. They began to retrace their steps.
"I was right never to speak to you about it before," he said presently. "Mutual confidences are for happy people, Kate. Men burthened with great sorrows know them to be incommunicable. Forgive me that I for a moment forgot."
Her passion had died away as quickly as it had blazed forth. She heard him in silence, a sob in her throat.