e. She put on some coal, she
blew the dim embers to a glow.

Fay watched her.

Magdalen did not look at her. She sat down by the fire, keeping her eyes
fixed upon it.

"I have done something very wicked," said Fay in a hollow voice from the
bed. "If I tell you all about it will you promise, will you swear to me
that you will never tell anybody?"

"I promise," said Magdalen after a moment.

"Swear it."

"I swear."

Fay made several false starts and then said:

"I was very unhappy with Andrea."

Magdalen became perceptibly paler and then very red.

"He never cared for me," continued Fay, slipping off the bed, and
kneeling down before the fire. "It's a dreadful thing to marry a man who
does not really care. I sometimes think men can't care. They are too
selfish. They don't know what love is. I was very young. I did not know
anything about life. He was kind, but he never understood me."

Magdalen's eyes filled with tears. In the room at the end of the passage
she had listened to her mother's faint voice in nights of wakeful
weakness speaking of her unhappy marriage. Did all women who failed to
love deep enough say the same things? And as Magdalen had listened in
silence then so she listened in silence now.

"He did not trust me. And then I had no children, and he was dreadfully
disappointed. And he kept things to himself. There was no real
confidence between us, as there ought to be between husband and wife,
those whom God has joined together. Andrea never seemed to remember
that. And gradually his conduct had its natural effect. I grew not to
care for him, and--he brought it on himself--I'm not excusing myself,
Magdalen--I see now that I was to blame too--I ended by caring for
someone else--someone who _did_ love me, who always had since we were
boy and girl together."

"Not Michael!"

"Yes. Michael. And when he came out to Rome it began all over again. It
never would have done if Andrea had been a good husband. I did my best.
I tried to stave it off, but I was too miserable and lonely and I cared
at last. And he was madly in love with me. He worshipped me."

Fay paused. She was looking earnestly into her recollections. She was so
far withholding nothing. As she knelt before the fire making her
confession Magdalen saw that according to her lights she was speaking
the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

"Of course he found it out at last and--and we agreed to part. We
decided that he must leave Rom