“I am twenty.”

“And you are fond of—my brother?”

“I would die for him.”

Impossible to mistake the tone of her voice, or the look in her eyes, true deep Slav eyes; dark brown, not blue as he had thought at first. It was a very pretty face—either her life had not eaten into it yet, or the suffering of these last hours had purged away those marks; or perhaps this devotion of hers to Larry. He felt strangely at sea, sitting there with this child of twenty; he, over forty, a man of the world, professionally used to every side of human nature. But he said, stammering a little:

“I—I have come to see how far you can save him. Listen, and just answer the questions I put to you.”

She raised her hands, squeezed them together, and murmured:

“Oh! I will answer anything.”

“This man, then—your—your husband—was he a bad man?”

“A dreadful man.”

“Before he came here last night, how long since you saw him?”