“Norman,” she said, in a trembling voice, “you are doing wrong in sending me away.  You cannot outrage Heaven’s laws with impunity.  It is Heaven’s law that husband and wife should cleave together.  You cannot break it.”

“I have no wish to break it.  I say simply that I shall love you until I die, but that you must be my wife in name only.”

“It is bitterly hard,” she observed; and then she looked up at him suddenly.  “Norman,” she said, “let me make one last appeal to you.  I know the stigma is terrible—­I know that the love-story must be hateful to you—­I know that the vague sense of disgrace which clings to you even now is almost more than you can bear; but, my darling, since you say you love me so dearly, can you not bear this trial for my sake, if in everything else I please you—­if I prove myself a loving, trustful, truthful wife, if I fulfill all my duties so as to reflect honor on you; if I prove a worthy mistress of your household?”

“I cannot,” he replied, hoarsely; but there must have been something in his face from which she gathered hope, for she went on, with a ring of passionate love in her voice.

“If, after we had been married, I had found out that you had concealed something from me, do you think that I should have loved you less?”

“I do not think you would, Madaline; but the present case is different—­entirely different; it is not for my own sake, but for the honor of my race.  Better a thousand times that my name should die out than that upon it there should be the stain of crime!”

“But, Norman—­this is a weak argument, I know—­a woman’s argument—­still, listen to it, love—­who would know my secret if it were well kept?”

“None; but I should know it,” he replied, “and that would be more than sufficient.  Better for all the world to know than for me.  I would not keep such a secret.  I could not.  It would hang over my head like a drawn sword, and some day the sword would fall.  My children, should Heaven send any to me, might grow up, and then, in the height of some social or political struggle, when man often repeats against his fellow man all that he knows of the vilest and the worst, there might be thrown into their faces the fact that they were descended from a felon.  It must not be; a broken heart is hard to bear—­injured honor is perhaps harder.”

She drew up her slender figure to its full height, her lovely face glowed with a light he did not understand.

“You may be quite right,” she said.  “I cannot dispute what you say.  Your honor may be a sufficient reason for throwing aside the wife of less than twelve hours, but I cannot see it.  I cannot refute what you have said, but my heart tells me you are wrong.”

“Would to Heaven that I thought the same!” he rejoined, quickly.  “But I understand the difficulties of the case, my poor Madaline, and you do not.”

She turned away with a low, dreary sigh, and the light died from her face.