truth besides the truth about
the name, would it have prevented me from ever returning to my husband?
Was that what he meant? Did the sort of discovery that he contemplated
mean something so dreadful that it would have parted us at once and
forever? I stood by his chair in silence, and tried to find the answer
to those terrible questions in his face. It used to speak to me so
eloquently when it spoke of his love. It told me nothing now.

He sat for some time without looking at me, lost in his own thoughts.
Then he rose on a sudden and took his hat.

"The friend who lent me the yacht is in town," he said. "I suppose I had
better see him, and say our plans are changed." He tore up the telegram
with an air of sullen resignation as he spoke. "You are evidently
determined not to go to sea with me," he resumed. "We had better give it
up. I don't see what else is to be done. Do you?"

His tone was almost a tone of contempt. I was too depressed about
myself, too alarmed about _him,_ to resent it.

"Decide as you think best, Eustace," I said, sadly. "Every way, the
prospect seems a hopeless one. As long as I am shut out from your
confidence, it matters little whether we live on land or at sea--we
cannot live happily."

"If you could control your curiosity." he answered, sternly, "we might
live happily enough. I thought I had married a woman who was superior to
the vulgar failings of her sex. A good wife should know better than to
pry into affairs of her husband's with which she had no concern."

Surely it was hard to bear this? However, I bore it.

"Is it no concern of mine?" I asked, gently, "when I find that my
husband has not married me under his family name? Is it no concern of
mine when I hear your mother say, in so many words, that she pities your
wife? It is hard, Eustace, to accuse me of curiosity because I cannot
accept the unendurable position in which you have placed me. Your cruel
silence is a blight on my happiness and a threat to my future. Your
cruel silence is estranging us from each other at the beginning of our
married life. And you blame me for feeling this? You tell me I am prying
into affairs which are yours only? They are _not_ yours only: I have my
interest in them too. Oh, my darling, why do you trifle with our love
and our confidence in each other? Why do you keep me in the dark?"

He answered with a stern and pitiless brevity,

"For your own good."

I turned away from him in silence. He was