She dropped my hand, and sat by me in silence, thinking. Had I—without meaning it, God knows!—had I disappointed her?
“Did you expect me to tell my own sad story,” I said, “as frankly and as trustfully as you have told yours?”
“Oh, don’t think that! I know what an effort it was to you to answer me at all. Yes, indeed! I wonder whether I may ask something. The sorrow you have just told me of is not the only one—is it? You have had other troubles?”
“Many of them.”
“There are times,” she went on, “when one can’t help thinking of one’s own miserable self. I try to be cheerful, but those times come now and then.”
She stopped, and looked at me with a pale fear confessing itself in her face.
“You know who Selina is?” she resumed. “My friend! The only friend I had, till you came here.”
I guessed that she was speaking of the quaint, kindly little woman, whose ugly surname had been hitherto the only name known to me.
“Selina has, I daresay, told you that I have been ill,” she continued, “and that I am staying in the country for the benefit of my health.”
It was plain that she had something to say to me, far more important than this, and that she was dwelling on trifles to gain time and courage. Hoping to help her, I dwelt on trifles, too; asking commonplace questions about the part of the country in which she was staying. She answered absently—then, little by little, impatiently. The one poor proof of kindness that I could offer, now, was to say no more.