'I joined the order after I left you,' he said. 'That is, they simply allow me to live with them, chiefly on account of my name, I think; that, and, I think, as an act of mercy. As a kind of lay brother—it is simple. But, this man—he is your husband?'
'Yes, I have been married to him eight months.'
'In God’s name!' he said, but in a perfectly even conversational tone. 'And you have suffered. Of course you have suffered.'
They used throughout their conversation, as I have not indicated here, because it sounds forced in English, the familiar and gentle tutoiement, the thee-and-thouing of the French.
The husband, understanding nothing of what they said, was watching the two with interest; his small eyes were eager in his heavy face; he was waiting for his answer.
'Do not let us talk too long,' the Franciscan said, and turned with a faintly courteous smile, as though to include the heavy man in the conversation. 'Ask me some more questions,' he said to the woman; 'get him to ask some more questions, I mean. In that way we shall have a little time to talk together.'
She addressed her husband.
'He is not quite sure. He thinks, however, the man he has in mind has a gray beard.'
Her husband drew his large flat fingers down his heavy chin twice, as if stroking an imaginary beard of his own, thoughtfully; his eyes narrowed even more, very speculatively.
'I see, I see! Well now, like as not it’s the same one.' Then he put his hands on his knees and leaned forward as though really addressing himself to the business. 'Look here, Louise, you ask him if this man he knows ever had anything to do with a railway—a railway out West and coal lands out there.'