One also had done, that some
great sacrifice, some great fortitude and generosity, lay within this
sealed secret of his sufferance of wrong. She knew, too, that it would
be useless to seek to learn that which he had chosen to conceal; that
for no slender cause could he have come out to lead this life of whose
 she could gauge the measure; that nothing save some absolute
and imperative reason could have driven him to accept such living death
as was his doom in Africa.

"Tell no one!" she echoed. "What! not Philip even? Not your oldest
friend. Ah! be sure, whatever the evidence might be against you, his
 never condemned you for one instant."

"I believe it. Yet all you can do for me, all I implore you to do for
me, is to keep silence forever on my name. To-day, accident has made me
break a vow I never thought but to keep sacred. When you recognized me,
I could not deny myself, I could not lie to you; but, for God's sake,
tell none of what has passed between us!"

"But why?" she pursued--"why? You lie under this  still--you
cannot disprove it, you say