fear you may regret.
But you must never regret. Any man you might have met could be more
attractive than I, but no one could care for you more; no one. Tell me;
you believe that, do you not?"

And Eden, turning her head with the motion of a swan, answered, "I know
it."

"Eden," he continued, "my life has not been pleasant. I have told you
little of it. In the lives of everyone there are incidents that are best
left buried. If I have been reticent it has not been from lack of
confidence; it has been because I feared to distress you. For years I
did not understand; the reason of pain is seldom clear. At times I
thought my strength overtaxed. I accused fate; it had been wilful to me.
It had beckoned me to pleasant places; when I reached them the meadows
disappeared, the intervales were quagmires, and the palace I had espied
was a prison, with a sword for bolt. I accused justice as I had accused
fate. Eden, men are not always sincere. There are people who do wrong,
who injure, wantonly, in sport. And so I accused justice: I had expected
it to be human; but justice is straight as a bayonet, and her breasts
are of stone. It was long before I understood, but when I saw you I did.
What I had suffered was needful; it was a preparation for you. No,
justice is never human, but sometimes it is divine."

He had been speaking in a monotone, his voice sinking at times into a
whisper, as though he feared some other than herself might hear his
words. Eden's hand still lay within his own, and now he stood up and led
her, waist-encircled, to the outer room. There they found other seats,
and for a moment both were silent.

"If I have not questioned you," Eden said, at last, "it has been for a
woman's reason. I am content. Had you a grief, I would demand to share
it with you. It would be my right, would it not? But of what has gone
before I prefer to remain in ignorance. It is not that I am incurious.
It is that I prefer to think of your life as I think of my own, that its
beginning was our wedding-day. I too am some times afraid. There are
things of which I also have been reticent. I remember once thinking that
to be happy was a verb that had no present tense. I do not think so
now," she added, after a moment; and to her exquisite lips the smile
returned. "There are so many things I want to tell," she continued.
"Before I met you I thought myself in love. Oh, but I did, though. And
it was not until after I had known you that I found t