A pause! Against his will his eyes dwell upon her, hungry and fierce, astonished at the alteration wrought in her whom he had once thought fairest among women. Faded, wasted, forlorn, to his cost he finds that he still thinks her so.
"Is this bondage to last all your life, then?" he inquires more collectedly, after a few seconds.
"Until they die, or until my voice fails."
"And what then?"
"I must look out for some other old people, to whom I can be ears, and voice, and feet."
"Good God! And what can be your motive?"
"One must live."
"I had thought the world wide enough for two people to walk apart," he says, with almost a groan. "I have entreated God that I might never look on your face again, and this is how my prayer is answered."
Another pause. "Tick-tack—tick-tack—tick-tack," goes a clock in the gallery overhead.
"You look extremely ill!"