“No,” she said. “I didn’t mean myself. I meant him ... Mr. Landry. There are—good people. He is good.”

“Do you love him?”

She was amazed and shocked.

“Do you?” he asked again.

She thought for a moment, and then she said, “No!” For it was not the love Lawrence meant.

“Do you love me?”

“I—I don’t know, Lawrence....”

“Then why, may I ask, do you stay with me?”

“I—because I—want to do what is right. I want to be—loyal.... I want to—to help you.”

“You don’t. You’re not really any use at all. You’re so slow and thick-witted. You can’t even make a living. You borrow money for me, it is true, but that’s not so hard. I could do that better alone. I’ve only endured you out of pity, because if I turned you out, you’d starve to death—or, as they say in the books—you would meet with ‘worse than death.’ You’ve no character.”