She buried her face in her hands and was seized by a fit of hysterical sobbing. All her self-control had vanished at the instant she realised that I know the truth, and she now stood before me bent and penitent.
“Forgive me,” she whispered earnestly. “Forgive me, Geoffrey.”
“No,” I answered, with firmness. “I cannot trust you.”
“Overlook this incident, and I will never again give you cause for jealousy,” she exclaimed. “I will do anything you ask, only have patience with me.”
“I have already had patience,” I answered. “Yet, deceived as I am daily, we can live together no longer.”
“But I love you,” she declared, with fierce earnestness, fixing her fathomless eyes upon me. “If I lose you I shall kill myself.”
“It is your own fault entirely,” I said. “You have chosen to act in this manner, and whatever are the consequences they are of your own seeking. I suppose you will tell me next that this man who was with you compelled you to meet him.”
“That is the absolute truth,” she faltered.
“Ah, always the same lame tale,” I observed in disgust. “I have not forgotten that night at ‘The Nook’ when I watched you walking with Beck. No, Ella. There is some strange mystery about it all that I don’t like. You pretend to love me; but you have some ulterior motive.”
“There is a mystery, it is true,” she admitted, her eyes dimmed with tears. “A mystery so strange and startling that when you know the truth you will stand aghast and dumbfounded. But with its elucidation you will have knowledge of how I have suffered and striven for your sake; therefore I can only pray that the revelations that must accrue may be hastened, for, although to-day you regard me as base and deceitful, you will then learn how much one woman has endured and sacrificed because she loved you.”