"Madeleine, you know that our life together has been without the slightest shadow from the first. You know we have proved to each other how immense our love has been. In all these years I have grown in maturity and understanding. I regret only one thing, and I have regretted it bitterly, every day—that I once asked you, if—if ever for a moment another man came into your life to hide it from me, to tell me a lie. It was a great mistake. I have never ceased to regret it. Our love has been so above all worldly things that there ought not to be the slightest concealment between us. I release you from that promise. Tell me now the truth. It will mean nothing to me. During the eight years when we were separated there were—there must have been times, times of loneliness, of weakness, when other men came into your life. Weren't there?"
She turned and looked at him steadily, her large eyes seeming larger and more brilliant from the heightened fever of her cheeks. Then she made a little negative sign of her head, still looking at him.
"No, never."
"You don't understand, Madeleine," he said, dissatisfied, "or you are still thinking of what I said to you there in Etretat. That was thirteen years ago. Then I had just begun to love you, I feared for the future, for everything. Now I have tested you, and I have never had a doubt. I know the difference between the flesh and the spirit. I know your two selves; I know how impossible it would have been otherwise. Now you can tell me."
"There is nothing—to tell," she said slowly.
"I expected that you would have other men who loved you about you," he said, feverishly. "I knew it would be so. I swear to you I expected it. I know why you continue to deny it. It's for my sake, isn't it? I love you for it. But, believe me, in such a moment there ought nothing to stand between us. Madeleine, Madeleine, I beg you, tell me the truth."
She continued to gaze at him fixedly, without turning away her great eyes, as forgetting himself, he rushed on:
"Yes, let me know the truth—that will be nothing now. Besides, I have guessed it. Only I must know one way or the other. All these years I have lived in doubt. You see what it means to me. You must understand what is due me after all our life together. Madeleine, did you lie to me?"
"No."
"Listen," he said, desperately. "You never asked me the same question—why, I never understood—but if you had questioned me I could not have answered truthfully what you did. There, you see, there is no longer the slightest reason why you should not speak the truth."