Why should I have asked, if I did not ?" Still he says nothing: still I feel, though I am not looking at him, that his eyes are upon me.
"Was it--" say I, unable any longer to bear that dumb gaze, and preferring to take the bull by the horns, and rush on my fate--"was it any thing about _me_?
has she been telling you any tales of--of--_me_ ?" No answer! No sound but the clock, and Vick's heavy breathing, as she peacefully snores on the footstool.

I _cannot_ bear the suspense.

Again I lift my eyes, and look at him.

Yes, I am right! the intense anxiety--the overpowering emotion on his face tell me that I have touched the right string.
"Are there--are there--are you aware that there are any tales that she _could_ tell of you ?" Again I laugh harshly.
"Ha! ha! if we came to mutual anecdotes, I am not quite sure that I might not have the best of it!" "That is not the question," he replies, in a voice so exceedingly stern, so absolutely different from any thing I have ever hitherto contemplated as possible in my gentle, genial Roger, that again, to the depths of my soul, I quail; how could I ever, in wildest dreams, have thought I should dare to tell him?
--"it is nothing to me what tales _you_ can tell of _her_!--_she_ is not my wife!--what I wish to know--what I _will_ know, is, whether there is any thing that she _could_ say of you!" For a moment, I do not answer.

I cannot.