"He never told me," murmured the girl.
"It ain't likely he would," the other stated with finality. "It was over a woman, and not a particularly pretty story, any way you look at it."
Her dark eyes widened. She bit her lip. It came to her how little of his life she had shared.
"Oh!" she barely breathed. And again, falteringly: "Oh!"
From that halting monosyllable Joe judged that something was amiss. Observation had never been a slow or painful process of concentration with him.
"He didn't even know who she was. He'd never even seen her before," quickly he put her right. "She was just a public dancer, that was all. But a man—mistreated her—and Steve, he just interfered——"
Indeed, Joe had found the way to comfort her and still tell the truth, even though he found it foolishly difficult to swallow food and watch at the same time the warmth which his words kindled. So for an hour he lingered at table and told her many things concerning the man she loved which she would never have learned from his own lips. And it was Joe's jocularity which in the end subdued her rebel spirit. She yielded at last and promised to go home and rest, but only after he had promised first in a fashion which could leave no doubt in her heart, that he would come for her if things grew worse.
Before she left him that morning she told Joe of Big Louie, whom she had had to leave in the road; but he interrupted her before she could finish. They had already found Big Louie. Then she gave him the note which she had discovered crushed beneath Steve's body. This Joe scanned ferociously; he flashed a strange glance at her from bleached blue eyes.
"Some one traced your name," he put into words the first thought that had been hers. "Some one who had your signature to copy."
She nodded, whitely, in horror. Joe folded the paper and tucked it into a pocket.