t followed there was something passionate,
something which she never remembered to have encountered before in her
dealings with him.

At the end of a long pause he spoke, with obvious constraint. "And you
will not tell me what he said?"

"Is it worth while?" said Chris. "I daresay we shall never see him
again."

"He insulted you, no?" said Bertrand.

She yielded, half-involuntarily, to his persistence. "He made
some--rather horrid--insinuations. He spoke of the duel and of what
happened at Valpre. And he asked--he asked if--Trevor knew."

A fierce oath burst headlong from Bertrand, the first she had ever heard
him utter. He apologized for it instantly, almost in the same breath, but
she was startled by the violence of it none the less, so startled that
she decided then and there that, if she would keep the peace between him
and his enemy, she must confide in him no further.

"But that was really all," she hastened to assure him. "I left him then,
and--and I think we had better forget it, Bertie. Promise me you will."

He took the persuasive hand she laid upon his arm, but for several
seconds he did not speak. It seemed as if he could not trust himself to
do so.

At last, "Christine," he said, "I think that your husband ought to know."

She started at the words, almost snatching her hand from him. "Bertie!
What do you mean? Know of what?"

He answered her with great steadiness; his eyes met hers unwaveringly.
"Of that which happened at Valpre," he said.

She gazed at him in growing consternation. "Bertie, how--are you
mad?--how could I tell him that?"

"With your permission, I will tell him," he said resolutely.

But she cried out at that, almost as if he had hurt her: "Oh no, no,
never! Why should he know now? Don't you see how impossible it is? If I
had ever meant to tell him, it ought to have been long ago."

"Yes," said Bertrand.

The quietness of his tone only agitated her still further. His evident
determination terrified her. In that moment all her fear of her husband
rose to towering proportions, a monster she dared not even contemplate.
She clasped Bertrand's arm between her hands in wild, unreasoning
supplication.

"Oh, you must not--you shall not! Bertie, you won't, will you? Promise
me you won't--promise me! He wouldn't understand. He would want to know
why I had never told him before. He would--he would--"

"Ah! but I would explain," Bertrand protested gently.

"But you couldn't! He wo