She tapped her foot. It was the first symptom of nervous impatience that I had observed in her.
"Not in body," she replied curtly. "Tell me all about the funeral."
And I gave her an account of the impressive incidents of the interment—the stately procession, the grandiose ritual, the symbols of public grief. She displayed a strange, morbid curiosity as to it all.
And then suddenly she rose up from her chair, and I rose also, and she demanded, as it were pushed by some secret force to the limit of her endurance:
"You loved him, didn't you, Mr. Foster?"
It was not an English phrase; no Englishwoman would have used it.
"I was tremendously fond of him," I answered. "I should never have thought that I could have grown so fond of any one in such a short time. He wasn't merely fine as an artist; he was so fine as a man."
She nodded.
"You understood him? You knew all about him? He talked to you openly, didn't he?"
"Yes," I said. "He used to tell me all kinds of things."