a new note in his voice, "I think I am right in believing that,
notwithstanding this regret, you do not in your heart wish to leave me?"

She quivered, and hid her face in silence.

He waited a few seconds, and finally went on as if she had answered in
the affirmative.

"That being so, I have a foundation on which to build. I would not ask
of you anything which you feel unable to grant. But there is only one
way for us to get out of the circle that I can see. Will you take it
with me, Naomi? Shall we go away together, and leave this miserable
estrangement behind us?"

His voice was low and tender. Yet she felt instinctively that he had not
found it easy to expose his most sacred reserve thus. She moved
convulsively, trying to answer him, trying for several unworthy moments
to accept in silence the shelter his generosity had offered her. But her
efforts failed, for she had not been moulded for deception; and this new
weapon of his had cut her to the heart. Heavy, shaking sobs overcame
her.

"Hush!" he said. "Hush! I never dreamed you felt it so."

"Ah, you don't know me!" she whispered. "I--I am not what you think me.
I have disobeyed you, deceived you, cheated you!" Humbled to the earth,
she made piteous, halting confession before her tyrant. "I was at the
masquerade tonight. I waltzed--and afterwards went into the maze--in the
dark--with a stranger--who made love to me. I never--meant you--to
know."