"Is that all you know?"
"Yes."
"Does he know more than that?"
"He says he does not."
"You have no clew to your parentage?"
"None."
Her gaze became preoccupied, wandered from his, grew vaguely wistful.
"Out of the gutter," she said, without any bitterness in her emotionless voice. "—Of which circumstance he has frequently reminded me." With an unconscious movement she extended one exquisitely fashioned hand and gazed at it absently; looked down at the slim foot, where on the delicately arched instep a peasant's silver buckle glimmered.
Then, resting her grey eyes on him:
"If it really was the gutter, it is odd," she said, half to herself, "because always that second self which lives within me goes freshly bathed and clean and clothed in silk."