"With you?" Lily said.
She felt horribly frightened and yet strong and earnest.
"Yes, with me," he answered. "I told you that I was a haunted man. Miss Alston, can you, will you bear to hear what it is that is with me, and why it comes. It is a story that, perhaps, your father might forbid you to read. I don't know. And, if it was fiction, perhaps he would be right. But—but—I think—I wonder—you might help me. I can't see how, but—I feel—"
He faltered suddenly, and seemed for the first time to become self-conscious and confused.
"Tell me, please," Lily said.
She felt rather as if she were beginning to read some strange French story by night. Maurice still stood on the hearth.
"It is a sound that is with me," he said. "Only that; never anything else but that."
"A sound," she repeated.
She thought of their conversation about the bells.
"Yes, it is a cry—the cry of a child."