“I don’t know why I said that, Inga,” he corrected himself hastily, “forgive me. I know you better.”
She raised her eyes, looked at him and smiled faintly.
“He has written me again,” she repeated as though she had forgotten that she had announced it before. “It is very pitiful. He is in a bad way, he has no one and it is all my fault.”
“Yours, Inga?” he said, astonished.
“Yes, it is my fault,” she said, her glance in the distance. “I failed. He was weak—very weak—but I failed to do what I should.”
She looked down and drew the letter from its envelope and extended it towards him.
“Mr. Dan—I would like to answer it—very much.”
He looked hungrily at the crumpled paper she thus offered him. He knew it was the key to many things which had mystified him in the past, the chart to that shadowy personality which had been in the background of her life, whom often he had detected in her eyes intruding when most they were alone, whose words and thoughts had come to him on her lips. Then a wave of pity came to him for the woman whom he had absorbed so covetously in his need and in a moment of generosity he refused to part the veil.
“No, I do not want to see it, that is not necessary,” he said gently. “Do what you wish. If you can help him, do so.”