A Terrible Secret

He turns away, shame, remorse, fear in his averted face. He holds the back of the chair with one hand, she clings to the other as though it held her last hope in life.

"Take time," she says, in the same slow, whispering way. "I can wait. I have waited so long, what does a few minutes more matter now? But think well before you speak--there is more at stake than you know of. My whole future life hangs on your words. A woman's life. Have you ever thought what that implies? 'Was to have been,' you said. Does that mean it never is to be?"

Still no reply. He holds the back of the chair, his face averted, a criminal before his judge.

"And while you think," she goes on, in that slow, sweet voice, "let me recall the past. Do you remember, Victor, the day when I and Juan came here from Spain? Do you remember me? I recall you as plainly at this moment as though it were but yesterday--a little, flaxen-haired, blue-eyed boy in violet velvet, unlike any child