He couldn’t answer.
“I’d like—— How can I help you best about them?” she asked.
He still stared at her in speechless misery. He tried in vain to picture his future life, tried to realise that he was left with two small children who had no mother. Useless. He could imagine no other person in Minnie’s place. No one but Minnie looking after those children; anyone else would be an impostor, a fraud, intolerable.
“I don’t know,” he said, “I haven’t thought much about it yet.”
“I’d do my best for them,” Frances said, with something like entreaty in her voice.
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Petersen, “they may take away Sandra.”
And to his horror, a sob escaped him. He could not endure the idea of losing that beloved little girl; he fancied her gone, and his own poor baby more solitary than ever. Like a flash came the full realisation of the wreck of his life, the desolation ahead of him. He bowed his head in his huge hands.
Frances came over to him.
“Please!” she said, “Mr. Petersen!”
It was the first time she had felt any pity for him; she had pitied Lionel, pitied herself; now her heart was wrung for this poor fellow, innocent as herself, and more wronged.