“It’s strange enough that I’m alive.”
Those words of Jo’s “Wild and lost” came back to him.
“Ah!” he said: “my son saw you for a moment—that day.”
“Was it your son? I heard a voice in the hall; I thought for a second it was—Phil.”
Old Jolyon saw her lips tremble. She put her hand over them, took it away again, and went on calmly: “That night I went to the Embankment; a woman caught me by the dress. She told me about herself. When one knows that others suffer, one’s ashamed.”
“One of those?”
She nodded, and horror stirred within old Jolyon, the horror of one who has never known a struggle with desperation. Almost against his will he muttered: “Tell me, won’t you?”
“I didn’t care whether I lived or died. When you’re like that, Fate ceases to want to kill you. She took care of me three days—she never left me. I had no money. That’s why I do what I can for them, now.”
But old Jolyon was thinking: “No money!” What fate could compare with that? Every other was involved in it.
“I wish you had come to me,” he said. “Why didn’t you?” But Irene did not answer.