"No," she said presently. "I am not that kind."
She raised her eyes and they met Mrs. Talcott's. "What are you going to do now?" she asked.
"Well," said Mrs. Talcott, drawing a long sigh of fatigue, "I've been thinking that over and I guess I'll stay over here. There ain't any place for me in America now; all my folks are dead. You know that money my Uncle Adam left me a long time ago that I bought the annuity with. Well, I've saved most of that annuity; I'd always intended that Karen should have what I'd saved when I died. But Karen don't need it now. It'll buy me a nice little cottage somewhere and I can settle down and have a garden and chickens and live on what I've got."
"How much was it, the annuity?" Madame von Marwitz asked after a moment.
"A hundred and ten pounds a year," said Mrs. Talcott.
"But you cannot live on that," Madame von Marwitz, after another moment, said.
"Why, gracious sakes, of course I can, Mercedes," Mrs. Talcott replied, smiling dimly.
Again there was silence and then Madame von Marwitz said, in a voice a little forced: "You have not got much out of life, have you, Tallie?"
"Well, no; I don't expect you would say as I had," Mrs. Talcott acquiesced, showing a slight surprise.
"You haven't even got me—now—have you," Madame von Marwitz went on, looking down at her door-knob and running her hand slowly round it while she spoke. "Not even the criminal. But that is a gain, you feel, no doubt, rather than a loss."