The caution was unnecessary, for Ann tumbled out a full confession as she sank into the comfort of Lotta’s kindness. She guessed at once who Lotta was, but was too exhausted for resentment. She had dragged herself off to her work in order to fill in the creeping hours.
Lotta said she was a friend of René’s, and wished to help, and asked if there was anything she could do. Ann burst into tears and rolled her head from side to side, and cried:
“Oh! I wish I was dead, I do. I nearly did myself in last night when he lay there in the dark not saying a word. I wish I had—I wish I had. I never been so miserable. . . .”
Lotta comforted her as best she could, clumsily dropping a word in here and there as Ann poured out her confused narrative.
Ann kept on saying:
“He ought to have gone if he wanted to go.”
“But he couldn’t leave you like that——”
“It was seeing him again done it. I couldn’t bear it, seeing him and knowing he was wanting to go.”
“He was wanting you to feel that—that he was not going out of indifference to you.”
“He doesn’t want me. He said that.”