'You have grown much older,' she said abruptly. 'You look as if you had suffered—but what of that?—C'est comme tout le monde.'
She withdrew her look a moment, with a little bitter gesture, then she resumed, drawn on by a curiosity and emotion she could not control.
'Are you married?'
'Yes, but my wife is dead.'
She gave a start; the first part of the answer had not prepared her for the second.
'Ah, mon Dieu!' she said, 'always grief—always! Is it long?'
'Eight months. I have a boy. And you?—I heard sad news of you once—the only time.'
'You might well,' she said, with a half-ironical accent, driving the point of her umbrella restlessly into the crevices of the stones, as they slowly crossed a paved street. 'My husband is only a cripple, confined to his chair,—I am no longer an artist but an artisan,—I have not painted a picture for years,—but what I paint sells for a trifle, and there is soup in the pot—of a sort. For the rest I spend my life in making tisane, in lifting weights too heavy for me, and bargaining for things to eat.'
'But—you are not unhappy!' he said to her boldly, with a change of tone.
She stopped, struck by the indescribable note in his voice. They had turned into a side street, whither she had unconsciously led him. She stood with her eyes on the ground, then she lifted them once more, and there was in them a faint beautiful gleam, which transformed the withered and sharpened face.