"To a man," he answered.
She sank back into her chair and smiled again.
"Ah," she said, "then it is of less consequence even than I imagined. It is pleasant to reflect that it was a man. One is not afraid of men."
She lifted the screen from her lap, and for a moment he could not see her face.
"Now he will go," she was saying to herself breathlessly behind it. "Now he must go. He will go now—and he will not come back."
But he did not go. It was the irony of fate that he should spare her nothing. In the few moments of silence which followed he had a great struggle with himself. It was such a struggle that, when it was at an end, he was pale and looked subdued. There was a chair near her. He went to it and sat down at her side.
"Bertha," he said, "there has been one thing in the midst of all—all this, to which you have been true. You have loved your children when it has seemed that nothing else would touch you. I say 'seemed,' because I swear to you I am unmoved in my disbelief in what you persist in holding before me—for what reason you know best. You love your children; you don't lie to me about that—you don't lie to yourself about it. Perhaps it is only nature, as you said once, and not tenderness; I don't know. I don't understand you; but give yourself a few moments to think of them now."
He saw the hand holding the screen tremble; he could not see her face.
"What—must I think of them?"
He looked down at the floor, knitting his brows and dragging at his great mustache.