“Why?” he echoed.
He looked at her in slight surprise as he sat near her, with Jules on the ground between them, against his knee, his eyes closed.
“Because ... because,” he stammered, “because you are my friend’s sister, I suppose, and I had never met you here....”
She made no answer: in her seclusion she had forgotten how to talk and she did not take the least trouble about it.
“I used often to see you at the theatre,” said Quaerts, “when Mr. van Even was still alive.”
“At the opera,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Really? I didn’t know you then.”
“No.”
“I have not been out in the evening for a long time, because of my mourning.”