He stared at her uneasily, finding nothing to say. He had never before heard anything like this from her.
“Can't anybody help me out of it?” she said quietly.
“Who? How?... Do you mean—”
“Yes, I mean it! I mean it! I—”
And suddenly she broke down, in a strange, stammering, tearless way, opening the dry flood-gates over which rattled an avalanche of words—bitter, breathless phrases rushing brokenly from lips that shrank as they formed them.
Plank sat inert, the corroding echo of the words clattering in his ears. And after a while he heard his own altered voice sounding persistently in repetition:
“Don't say those things, Leila; don't tell me such things.”
“Why? Don't you care?”
“Yes, yes, I care; but I can't do anything! I have no business to hear—to see you this way.”
“To whom can I speak, then, if I can not speak to you? To whom can I turn? Where am I to turn, in all the world?”