ret from you and I can do it
no longer. When you speak to me of your husband you drive me mad. If
I believed that you really loved him, I would go away and leave it to
chance whether or not you ever discovered the truth. As it is--"

"Well?" she interposed breathlessly.

"As it is," he continued, "I am going to tell you now. Your husband has
deceived you--he is deceiving you every moment."

She looked at him incredulously.

"You mean that there is another woman?"

Bernadine shook his head.

"Worse than that," he answered. "Your husband stole even your love under
false pretenses. You think that his life is a strange one, that
his nerves have broken down, that he flies from place to place for
distraction, for change of scene. It is not so. He left Rome, he left
Nice, he left Paris, for one and the same reason. He left because he was
in peril of his life. I know little of your history, but I know as
much as this. If ever a man deserved the fate from which he flees, your
husband deserves it."

"You are mad," she faltered.

"No, I am sane," he went on. "It is you who are mad, not to have
understood. Your husband goes ever in fear of his life. His real name
is one branded with ignominy throughout the world. The man whom you have
married, to whom you are so scrupulously faithful, is the man who sent
your father to death and your brothers to Siberia."

"Father Paul!" she screamed.

"You have lived with him, you are his wife," Bernadine declared.

The color had left her cheeks; her eyes, with their penciled brows, were
fixed in an almost ghastly stare; her breath was coming in uneven gasps.
She looked at him in silent terror.

"It is not true," she cried at last; "it cannot be true."

"Sophia," he said, "you can prove it for yourself. I know a little of
your husband and his doings. Does he not carry always with him a black
box which he will not allow out of his sight?"

"Always," she assented. "How did you know? By night his hand rests upon
it. By day, if he goes out, it is in my charge."

"Fetch it now," Bernadine directed, "and I will prove my words."

She did not hesitate for a moment. She disappeared into the inner room;
and came back, only a few moments absent, carrying in her hand a black
leather despatch-box.

"You have the key?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered, looking at him and trembling, "but I dare not--oh,
I dare not open it!"

"Sophia," he said, "if my words are not true, I will pass out of y