She uncovered her face and shot a look at him. They had a simultaneous impulse of surprise. Looking at each other, they knew, intuitively, each that the other was not the kind of person you would expect to find in Hawkins Row, Deptford.
For the first time since the gates of the jail closed behind him, Felix forgot to be lonely. He had a sudden, wholly ridiculous sense of being wanted. The moment he saw the face of the girl beside him he knew that she must be saved.
Cautiously he lowered her to the pillow, lifted her legs upon the bed, laid her flat, and bent over her.
"Where do you feel the pain?" he urgently asked.
"Everywhere—all over me. Oh, what shall I do? Why couldn't you let me die?"
"I don't know," said Felix, staring stupidly.
She sobbed aloud, drawing each breath with a groan. He sat by, his mind hardly working, vaguely wondering what would happen next. Presently he was conscious that her moaning had ceased, and he looked up with a sudden leap of his heart in his exhausted frame lest she should be dead. But her eyes were wide open, and roaming round the room.
"Do you live here?" she asked, timidly.
He laughed miserably. "I have contrived to support existence here for ten days," he said. "Now I can't stick it any longer. I was just going to take poison, that very moment that you—came."
She turned her head right round on the dirty pillow to look at him with horror. "You were going to kill yourself? How wicked!" she said, with tremendous emphasis.