Even now she was deceiving me. She would allow no word of her mysterious secret to pass her lips. It had always been the same. She would tell me absolutely nothing, vaguely asserting that to utter the truth would be to invoke an avenging power that she dreaded. I remembered how she had seemed terrorised on more than one occasion when I had demanded the truth, yet what I had learned that night increased my suspicions.
“If I forgive and seek no explanation of the past,” I said at last, “we must, I suppose, remain parted.”
“Ah, yes!” she gasped. “But only for a few short weeks. Then we will come together again never to part—never.”
“I can forgive on one condition only,” I said—“that you tell me the truth regarding the dastardly theft from me on the day of Dudley’s death.”
For an instant she was silent. Then, burying her face on my shoulder, sobbing, she answered in a tone so low as to be almost inaudible,—
“I cannot!”
Gently but firmly I put her from me, although she clung about my neck, urging me to pity her.
“I cannot pity you if you refuse to repose confidence in me,” I answered.
“I do not refuse,” she cried. “It is because my secret is of such a nature that, if divulged, it would wreck both your own happiness and mine.”
“Then to argue further is absolutely useless,” I answered coldly. “We must part.”