"You won't forget your promise?"
He spoke with the vacant, suffering tone of a sick child, or of a person so sunk into wretchedness as to find it hard to come up out of it.
"What?"
She repeated the words. "You won't forget your promise?"
His tone was still vacant—vacant and afflicted.
"What promise?"
"That you'd remember you're strong enough to bear it nobly."
"But I'm not."
She turned partly. He was bent over in a crushed, stupid attitude, his hands hanging limply between his knees. "Oh, Mr. Walker!"
He raised his forlorn eyes. "Why did you want to tell me?"