'You must give me time. Let me see! How does one say all that? My French is not so fluent as it once was. I shall have to get at it in a roundabout way. Have patience.'
'Take your time,' he said, leaning back, 'only get at it if you can. It’s important.'
She turned now to the Franciscan. But it was he rather who addressed her.
'But what are you going to do about this horrible marriage?'
'Nothing, nothing at all.'
'But, good God, it is desecration! It is like defiling the bread and wine of communion. Does this man kiss you?'
'He owns the better part of two railroads,' she said, with a kind of pitiful look in her eyes. 'He is here now to push to the wall—if he can—a man already overtaken by mischance and misfortune.'
'Why do you evade?' said the other. 'He does of course touch you, he owns you, along with the better part of two railroads. He fondles you at his pleasure. I would not have thought it possible. Not you; not you.'
'You forget,' she said, and still her voice kept the strangely even tone. 'My sister was ill, dying, I thought. I could give her everything by this means. I did give her everything. She is better now, as well as she will ever be. She could not bear poverty; it was killing her. She never could. She is better.'
'But at what horrible, what hellish cost!' he replied. 'She was selfish always, and complaining; one of the useless ones; and moreover, answer me, does one buy a cracked pitcher, doomed to be broken at any rate, with the most exquisite pearl in the world, priceless above ten sultans' ransoms? Were it not so horrible it would be ridiculous. Does one, I ask you, do a thing like that?'