Silence fell—a long, painful silence. He stood quite still, looking down at her pale face, and waiting for her answer with quickened heart-beats. For her, she seemed transformed to a statue of marble only for the quick throbs that stirred the filmy lace folded over her breast. She stood quite still, her eyes drooping from his, a look of pitiful despair frozen on the deathly pallor of her face. Outside they could hear a soft wind sighing among the flowers and kissing the blue waves of the bay. Within, the fragrance of an orange tree, blooming in a niche, came to them with almost sickening oppressiveness. Still she made no sign of answer.
"Bonnibel," he said, and his hoarse, strained voice fell so unnaturally on the stillness that he started at its strange sound, "Bonnibel, my darling little wife, you will give me that promise?"
She shivered through all her frame as if those pleading words had broken her trance of silence.
"Do not ask me," she said, faintly, "I cannot!"
"You will not give me that little promise, Bonnibel?"
"I cannot," she moaned, sinking into a chair and hiding her face in her hands.
"You are determined to leave me, then, if you can?" he exclaimed in a voice of blended horror and reproach.
"I must," she reiterated.
"Then tell me why you must go away, Bonnibel. What is this fatal secret that is driving you forth into exile? This mystery will drive me mad!"
She removed her hands a moment, and looked up at him with sad, wistful eyes, and a face crimson with painful blushes.