"I'm so sorry," Lizzie said. "I didn't know. How tiresome of me to have gone on chattering like that! You should have stopped me."
He seemed himself to be surprised at the confession that he had made. He stared at her in a bewildered fashion like an owl suddenly flashed into light. He stared, saying nothing. Suddenly in the same hurried, husky whisper he went on: "Do you mind my talking to you? I want to talk to somebody. I'd like to tell you about her."
"Please," said Lizzie, looking into his eyes, they were tender and beautiful, so unlike his ugly body, and full of unhappiness.
He talked; the words tumbled out in an urgent, tremulous confusion.
They had been married, it appeared, ten years, ten wonderful happy years. "How she can have cared for me, that's what I never understood, Miss—Miss——"
"Rand," said Lizzie.
"I beg your pardon. Difficult to catch ... when you are introduced.... Never understood. I was years older than she. I'm fifty now—forty when I married her, and she was only twenty. Thirty when she—when she died. In childbirth it was. The child, a boy, was born dead. Everyone prophesied disaster. They all told her not to marry me, she was so pretty, and so young, and so brilliant. She sang, Miss Rand, just like a lark. She did, indeed. She was trained in Paris. I oughtn't to have proposed to her, I suppose. That's what I tell myself now, but I was carried off my feet, completely off my feet. I couldn't help myself at all. I loved her from the first moment that I saw her. You know how those things are, Miss Rand. And, in any case, I don't know. Ten perfect years, that's a good deal for anyone to have, isn't it? And she was as happy as I was. It may seem strange to you, looking at me, but it was really so. She thought I was so much cleverer than I was—and better too. It used to make me very nervous sometimes lest she should find me out, you know, and leave me. I always expected that to happen. But she was so charitable to everyone. Never could see the bad side of people, and they were always better with her than with anyone else. We'd always hoped for a child, and then, as the years went on, we gave it up. Edmund, she said to me, we must make it up to one another. And then she told me it was going to be all right. You wouldn't have believed two ordinary people could be so happy as we were when we knew about it. We made many plans, of course. I was a little apprehensive that I'd be rather old to bring up a child, but she was so young that made it all right—so wonderfully young.... Then she died. It was incredible, of course. I didn't believe it ... I don't believe it now. She's not dead. That's absurd. You'd feel the same if you'd seen her, Miss Rand. So full of life, and then suddenly ... nothing at all. It's impossible. Nature isn't like that. Things gradually die, don't they, and change into something else. Not suddenly...."
He broke off. He was clutching his knees and staring in front of him. "I don't know why I talk to you like this, Miss Rand ... I hope you'll forgive me. I shouldn't have bothered you."
"I'm pleased that you have, Mr. Lapsley." She got up. She felt that he would be glad now to escape. "Won't you come and see me? I have a flat in Hortons Chambers in Duke Street, No. 42.... Do come. Just telephone."
He looked up at her, not rising from his seat. Then he got up.