"Don't look at me like that, as if you could murder me. You wouldn't if you knew how he's served me. He beat me, Ranny. He beat me with his hands and with his stick."
She rolled up the sleeves of her thin blouse.
"Look here—and here. That's what he was always doing to me. And I've got worse—bigger ones—on me breast and on me body."
"Good God—" The words came from him under his breath, and not even his instinct knew what he would say next.
He said—or rather some unknown power took hold of him and said it—"Why didn't you come to me before?"
She hesitated.
"He never turned me out until last night."
Her pause gave him time to measure the significance of what she said.
"He didn't really tire of me till I got ill. I had pneumonia last spring. I nearly died of it, and I've not been right since. That's how I got me cough. He couldn't stand it."
She paused.