He spoke a little hurriedly; he felt the embarrassment which every generous nature feels before one whom it has benefited.
The red blood came quickly and painfully over her face and throat.
'I do remember now,' she said. 'They were going to take me to prison. Can they do that when one has done no harm?'
'The guard thought you looked ill, and were too young to be alone at night,' Othmar answered, evasively still. He wished to learn something of her position, but he would not even hint any question to her. She should say what she chose in her own time and way.
'I do not mind being alone,' she replied, with something of the old pride and independence which Loswa had admired in her. 'I was weak because I had not eaten.'
She stopped abruptly, and grew scarlet.
It seemed very shameful to her to have been without food. She had always despised the poor crawling beggars whom she had seen on the mainland, even whilst she had given them all the loose coin in her pocket. 'Only the lazy and the idle ever starve,' her grandfather had often said to her, in the hardness of heart of a man full of energies and riches; and she had believed him. And now she had starved, she herself, and it seemed to her pitiful, miserable, hateful, a very brand for ever of disgrace.
'Do not think of it,' said Othmar kindly, as he took her hand in his.
'I shall think of it all my life!' she said bitterly, whilst the intensity of the tone told him that it was no mere empty phrase. She turned her face from him and looked steadfastly out into the green spaces and pleasant shadows of the gardens below, whilst her young features grew cold and stern, and full of repressed pain. Then all at once her head drooped on her breast, and she burst into a passion of tears.
'Oh, why did you not let me die!' she cried in reproach to him. 'Why did you not let me die when I was dying? I should have known nothing now!'