“All this—and what will be the end?”
“Well, doubtless there will be an end, but I’m not seer enough to foretell it.”
“Then you have some doubts?”
“Only those that beset all of us.”
“But somehow—well, you don’t seem to belong to this sort of game.”
“Why not?”
Unexpectedly he had set a wall between. She had no answer, and her embarrassment was visible on her cheeks.
“Here and there across the world rough men call me Slue-Foot. Perhaps my deformity has reacted upon my soul and twisted that. Perhaps if my countenance had been homely and rugged I would have walked the beaten paths of respectability. But the two together!”
“I’m sorry!”
“A woman such as you are would be. You are a true daughter of the great mother—Pity. But I have never asked pity of any. I have asked only that a man shall keep his word to me as I will keep mine to him.”