“Why does she keep crying today?” mused Rickie, as if he spoke to some mutual friend.
“I can make a guess,” said Stephen, and his heavy face flushed.
“Did you insult her?” he asked feebly.
“But who’s Gerald?”
Rickie raised his hand to his mouth.
“She looked at me as if she knew me, and then gasps ‘Gerald,’ and started crying.”
“Gerald is the name of some one she once knew.”
“So I thought.” There was a long silence, in which they could hear a piteous gulping cough. “Where is he now?” asked Stephen.
“Dead.”
“And then you—?”