"Then," said Sister Tobias, "we heard the dreadfullest scream. 'Mother!' just once, and after it dead silence. Then—I don't know how we got there, it was so like a cruel dream—but we were in the chapel, trying to raise them up. That dear Saint—may the Peace of God and the Bliss of His Vision be upon her for ever!—lay dead on the altar-steps where the wicked, murdering hand had shot her down.... And the child lay across her, just where she had dropped in trying to lift her. And the strength of me and the Sister, and the strength of them that came after, wasn't equal to unloose those slender little hands you're watching."
The slender little hands were busy with the slate and pencil as Saxham looked at them.
"Those that came and helped us had been sent on from the Convent bombproof, where they'd been to look for her"—Sister Tobias glanced sorrowfully at the owner of those little busy hands—"with an Ambulance chair and a story of more trouble. But Our Lady had had pity on the child. She was past understanding why they'd come to fetch her.... The brain can soak up trouble till it won't hold a drop more. But she was quiet and happy kneeling by that blessed Saint, waiting till the Lady should wake up, she said.... And, 'deed and 'deed, but it looked like the blessedest sleep——"
Sister Tobias broke down and cried outright. The child eyed her half suspiciously, half wonderingly. Her great terrified eyes had not seen the man strike, but he must have hurt the woman. Therefore, she looked sharply at the man between the tangled masses of the hair that could not be kept pinned up, and saw two great slow tears ooze over his thick underlids, and glitter as they hung there, and then fall. Others followed them, tumbling down the square white face, and the stern mouth was wrenched with a strange spasm, and the grim chin trembled curiously....
Somebody had hurt the man.... It is not possible to follow up the workings of the disordered intelligence, and spell out the blurred letters of the confused mind. It is enough that her terror of him abated. She slipped from her stool to the floor, under the pretence of picking up her slate-pencil, threw back the hair that prevented her seeing clearly, and peered up in that working face of Saxham's with curiosity, crouching near. She did not recoil violently when the strange, sorrowful face bent towards her; she only shrank back as Saxham asked:
"You remember me? You know my name?"
She nodded, eyeing him warily. If his hand had moved, she would have sprung backwards. But it did not stir.
"Tell me who I am, then?"
"Man."
Her lips shaped the word. Her voice was barely audible. His heart beat thickly as he went on: