She checked herself with a sudden biting of the lip, but the tears broke from her eyelids and she bowed her face.
“Ah,” said the man, “I know—this is very hard; but it is something, after all, to have felt—to have known. No loss can be so bitter as a lack—a need.”
There was a moment’s silence between them.
“Tell me of yourself,” she said, quietly, at length.
“There is little to tell. My life is very much the same. I have neither wife nor child. Until a man finds those, he’s a most indifferent topic.”
“You have never married?” she asked.
“No. Your life is, fuller, sweeter, better. Tell me of that. I used to know your husband—did you know?”
“No,” she said, “I did not know.”
“Yes, we were chaps together, he and I, the same age, though he seemed older—he was a plucky little fellow—you did not know him long, I believe, before you married.”
She was looking straight before her at the still fountain. “No,” she said, “I did not know him long.”