atone
for past silence by a perfect loyalty to truth.

"My wife, concealment is not generosity, for the heaviest trouble shared
together could not so take the sweetness from my life, the charm from
home, or make me more miserable than this want of confidence. It is a
double wrong, because you not only mar my peace but destroy your own by
wasting health and happiness in vain endeavors to bear some grief alone.
Your eye seldom meets mine now, your words are measured, your actions
cautious, your innocent gayety all gone. You hide your heart from me,
you hide your face; I seem to have lost the frank girl whom I loved, and
found a melancholy woman, who suffers silently till her honest nature
rebels, and brings her to confession in her sleep. There is no page of
my life which I have not freely shown you; do I do not deserve an equal
candor? Shall I not receive it?"

"Yes."

"Sylvia, what stands between us?"

"Adam Warwick."

Earnest as a prayer, brief as a command had been the question,
instantaneous was the reply, as Sylvia knelt down before him, put back
the veil that should never hide her from him any more, looked up into
her husband's face without one shadow in her own, and steadily told all.

The revelation was too utterly unexpected, too difficult of belief to be
at once accepted or understood. Moor started at the name, then leaned
forward, breathless and intent, as if to seize the words before they
left her lips; words that recalled incidents and acts dark and unmeaning
till the spark of intelligence fired a long train of memories and
enlightened him with terrible rapidity. Blinded by his own devotion, the
knowledge of Adam's love and loss seemed gages of his fidelity; the
thought that he loved Sylvia never had occurred to him, and seemed
incredible even when her own lips told it. She had been right in fearing
the effect this knowledge would have upon him. It stung his pride,
wounded his heart, and forever marred his faith in love and friendship.
As the truth broke over him, cold and bitter as a billow of the sea, she
saw gathering in his face the still white grief and indignation of an
outraged spirit, suffering with all a woman's pain, with all a man's
intensity of passion. His eye grew fiery and stern, the veins rose dark
upon his forehead, the lines about the mouth showed hard and grim, the
whole face altered terribly. As she looked, Sylvia thanked heaven that
Warwick was not there to feel the sudden atonem