"Have you no heart?" she asked suddenly.
"No, I am dead," he answered, in his clear, lifeless voice, that might have been a ghost's.
The words made her shiver, and she felt as though her hair were moving. From his face, as she had last seen it, and from his voice, he might almost have been dead, as he said he was, like the thousands of silent ones in the labyrinths under her feet, and she alone alive in the midst of so much death.
"What do you mean?" she asked, and her own voice trembled in spite of herself.
"It is very like being dead," he answered thoughtfully. "I cannot feel anything. I cannot understand why any one else should. Everything is the same to me. The world is a white blank to me, and one place is exactly like any other place."
"But why? What has happened to you?" asked Francesca.
"You know. You sent me those letters."
"What letters?"
"The package Reanda gave you before he died."
"Yes. What was in it? I told you that I did not know, when I wrote to you. I remember every word I wrote."