Stupefied and lost to all things as she was, she heard something in his harshness she could not understand and was startled by. Her small starved face stared at him piteously. There was no one but herself left in the world.
"There is no time—" he broke forth.
"He said so too," she cried out. "There was no time!"
"But he should have remembered," the harsh voice revealed more than he knew. "He could have given his child all that life holds that men call happiness. How could even a lad forget! He loved you—you loved him. If he had married you—"
He stopped in the midst of the words. The little starved face stared at him with a kind of awfulness of woe. She spoke as if she scarcely knew the words she uttered, and not, he saw, in the least as if she were defending herself—or as if she cared whether he believed her or not—or as if it mattered.
"Did you—think we were—not married?" the words dragged out.
Something turned over in his side. He had heard it said that hearts did such things. It turned—because she did not care. She knew what love and death were—what they were—not merely what they were called—and life and shame and loss meant nothing.
"Do you know what you are saying?" he heard the harshness of his voice break. "For God's sake, child, let me hear the truth."
She did not even care then and only put her childish elbows on her knees and her face in her hands and wept and wept.