Quarren said pleasantly: "If you're serious, Ledwith, you're a liar."
After a silence Ledwith said: "Do you think there's enough left of me to care what anybody calls me?"
Quarren turned: "I beg your pardon, Ledwith; I had no business to make you such an answer."
"Never mind.... In that last year—when I still knew people—and when they still knew me—you were very kind to me, Quarren."
"Why not? You were always decent to me."
Ledwith was now picking at his fingers, and Quarren saw that they were dreadfully scarred and maltreated.
"You've always been kind to me," repeated Ledwith, his extinct eyes fixed on space. "Other people would have halted at sight of me and gone the other way—or passed by cutting me dead.... You sat down beside me."
"Am I anybody to refuse?"
But Ledwith only blinked nervously down at his book, presently fell to twitching the uncut pages again.
"Poems," he said—"scarcely what you'd think I'd wish to read, Quarren—poems of youth and love——"