miserable conviction that there was an abyss in the shape of a
family secret between my husband and me. In the spirit, if not in
the body, we were separated, after a married life of barely four
days.

"Valeria," he asked, "have you nothing to say to me?"

"Nothing."

"Are you not satisfied with my explanation?"

I detected a slight tremor in his voice as he put that question.
The tone was, for the first time since we had spoken together, a
tone that my experience associated with him in certain moods of
his which I had already learned to know well. Among the hundred
thousand mysterious influences which a man exercises over a woman
who loves him, I doubt if there is any more irresistible to her
than the influence of his voice. I am not one of those women who
shed tears on the smallest provocation: it is not in my
temperament, I suppose. But when I heard that little natural
change in his tone my mind went back (I can't say why) to the
happy day when I first owned that I loved him. I burst out
crying.

He suddenly stood still, and took me by the hand. He tried to
look at me.

I kept my head down and my eyes on the ground. I was ashamed of
my weakness and my want of spirit. I was determined not to look
at him.