Bernadine shook his head.

"Worse than that," he answered. "Your husband stole even your love under
false pretences. You think that his life is a strange one; that his
nerves have broken down; that he flies from place to place for
distraction, for change of scene. It is not so. He left Rome, he left
Nice, he left Paris for one and the same reason. He left because he went
in peril of his life. I know little of your history, but I know as much
as this: If ever a man deserved the fate from which he flees, your
husband deserves it!"

"You are mad!" she faltered.

"No, I am sane," he went on. "It is you who are mad, not to have
understood. Your husband goes ever in fear of his life. His real name is
one branded with ignominy throughout the world. The man whom you have
married, to whom you are so scrupulously faithful, is the man who sent
your father to death and your brothers to Siberia."

"Father Paul!" she screamed.

"You have lived with him; you are his wife!" Bernadine declared.

The colour had left her cheeks; her eyes, with their pencilled brows,
were fixed in an almost ghastly stare; her breath was coming in uneven
gasps. She looked at him in silent terror.

"It is not true!" she cried at last. "It cannot be true!"

"Sophia," he said, "you can prove it for yourself. I know a little of
your husband and his doings. Does he not carry always with him a black
box which he will not allow out of his sight?"

"Always," she assented. "How did you know? By night his hand rests upon
it. By day, if he goes out, it is in my charge."

"Fetch it now," Bernadine directed. "I will prove my words."

She did not hesitate for a moment. She disappeared into the inner room
and came back after only a few moments' absence, carrying a black
leather dispatch-box.

"You have the key?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered, looking at him and trembling; "but I dare not--oh,
I dare not open it!"

"Sophia," he said, "if my words are not true, I will pass out of your
life for ever. I challenge you. If you open that box you will know that
your husband is indeed the greatest scoundrel in Europe."

She drew a key from a gold chain around her neck.

"There are two locks," she told him. "The other is a combination, but I
know the word. Who's that?"

She started suddenly. There was a loud tapping at the door. Bernadine
threw an antimacassar half over the box, but he was too late. De Grost
and Hagon had crossed the threshold. The woman stoo