That, I think," she added, "is the way I've best known." "Known ?" he repeated after a moment.
"Known.

Known that you were older friends, and so much more intimate ones, than I had any reason to suppose when we married.

Known there were things that hadn't been told me--and that gave their meaning, little by little, to other things that were before me." "Would they have made a difference, in the matter of our marriage," the Prince presently asked, "if you HAD known them ?" She took her time to think.

"I grant you not--in the matter of OURS." And then as he again fixed her with his hard yearning, which he couldn't keep down: "The question is so much bigger than that.

You see how much what I know makes of it for me." That was what acted on him, this iteration of her knowledge, into the question of the validity, of the various bearings of which, he couldn't on the spot trust himself to pretend, in any high way, to go.