“You look so home-like there,” after a pause he went on, laborious, determined. “Darning your stockings ... in your dark-blue wrapper.”
“All sorts of women darn stockings ... and wear wrappers.” She did not look at him. She was framed in the knowledge that he looked at her.
She saw his hand go through his thick brown hair. She felt it.
“I’ve been married fifteen years,” he said. “I know what I feel in you.”
She bit her lips.—Tell me. Tell me!
“For fifteen years I’ve been married to two women.”
She looked up.
“Only one of them legal, of course. But married to both of them just the same. I have had scores of girls during that time under my care. I know something of woman.”
—About me? about me, kind man, what do you know?
He answered her silence. “You I do not know. You are a mystery to me, Fanny. But you’re true and whole ... that I know ... like the whole earth.”