"I never loved you more dearly than I love you at
this moment! I never felt for you as I feel for you now!"

He released himself deliberately from my arms. He signed to me with the
mechanical courtesy of a stranger to take a chair.

"Thank you, Valeria," he answered, in cold, measured tones. "You could
say no less to me, after what has happened; and you could say no more.
Thank you."

We were standing before the fire-place. He left me, and walked away
slowly with his head down, apparently intending to leave the room.

I followed him--I got before him--I placed myself between him and the
door.

"Why do you leave me?" I said. "Why do you speak to me in this cruel
way? Are you angry, Eustace? My darling, if you _are_ angry, I ask you
to forgive me."

"It is I who ought to ask _your_ pardon," he replied. "I beg you to
forgive me, Valeria, for having made you my wife."

He pronounced those words with a hopeless, heart-broken humility
dreadful to see. I laid my hand on his bosom. I said, "Eustace, look at
me."

He slowly lifted his eyes to my face--eyes cold and clear and
tearless--looking at me in steady resignation, in immovable despair. In
the utter wretchedness of that moment, I was like him; I was as quiet
and as cold as my husband. He chilled, he froze me.

"Is it possible," I said, "that you doubt my belief in your innocence?"

He left the question unanswered. He sighed bitterly to himself. "Poor
woman!" he said, as a stranger might have said, pitying me. "Poor
woman!"

My heart swelled in me as if it would burst. I lifted my hand from his
bosom, and laid it on his shoulder to support myself.

"I don't ask you to pity me, Eustace; I ask you to do me justice. You
are not doing me justice. If you had trusted me with the truth in the
days when we first knew that we loved each other--if you had told me
all, and more than all that I know now--as God is my witness I would
still have married you! _Now_ do you doubt that I believe you are an
innocent man!"

"I don't doubt it," he said. "All your impulses are generous, Valeria.
You are speaking generously and feeling generously. Don't blame me,
my poor child, if I look on further than you do: if I see what is to
come--too surely to come--in the cruel future."

"The cruel future!" I repeated. "What do you mean?"

"You believe in my innocence, Valeria. The jury who tried me doubted
it--and have left that doubt on record. What reason have _you_ for
believing, i