“Why?” I inquired in surprise.
“There are the strongest reasons why she should never have become your wife,” she replied ambiguously.
“She lives apart from me. She has returned to her house in Paris,” I said.
“Ah! it is best,” she answered mechanically. “It is best for both of you.”
“But we love one another, and although she fears to tell me the truth regarding all this mystery that has enveloped her for so long, you, nevertheless, are in a position to explain everything. Therefore I have come to you. You were my wife’s friend, Sonia,” I went on. “Tell me why she has acted with all this secrecy.”
“Her friend,” she echoed blankly. “Yes, you are right,” she sighed. “It was a strange friendship, ours; she, a Grand Duchess against whom never a word of scandal had been uttered, and I—well I was notorious. The people in Vienna and Paris pointed at me in the streets, and fashionable women copied my manners and my dress. Yet there was, nay there still is, a strong tie between us, a tie that can never be severed.”
“Tell me of it,” I urged, when, pausing, she turned her pale agitated face away from me towards the small grimy window that overlooked the great sunlit steppe.
“Once I believed that she was your enemy, and told you so. I feared that because of her position she would never marry you. Yet it seems she was really in earnest, therefore I now withdraw that allegation. She evidently loves you.”
“Yes, but we are living apart because she fears the revelation of some terrible secret if she acknowledges me as her husband.”
“And that is why you have come here—to learn of her past!” she cried in a hoarse hollow voice, as if the truth had suddenly dawned upon her.