The woman did not immediately answer. She stood by him silent, motionless, looking vaguely into space. After a while she said falteringly:
"I—I don't know what I wish with you. Really I—misery——"
" ... loves company," he finished for her under his breath while reflecting: "How can one man be responsible for so much?" for it had been borne in upon him that the woman, like himself, was a social outcast with the hand of Wilkinson heavy on her, still pressing her down though he was no more.
The woman seemed to have read his thoughts, for she broke in upon them with:
"Oh, you didn't know Peter V. Wilkinson as I did! I've felt his force, sir, indeed I have.... But we won't talk about my story.... Won't you tell me yours, for I know——" She stopped abruptly and looked up at him, a strange, pathetic look in her eyes. And whether it was her rare beauty that appealed to him, or that she was so intensely human toward one who had been thrust into the gutter, at any rate she seemed like a bit of heaven opening up to him.
Therefore it was not long before he was pouring out into her ears all his sufferings at the hands of Wilkinson, and already he was beginning to like her because of the sorrow they had in common.
"Tell me," he said to her, "how can a man like that set my friends against me—hound me out of my clubs."
"I read about you and the Barristers'. You were treasurer—they claimed your books were crooked. I knew——"
"My bookkeeper must have been one of Wilkinson's men. Of course I made it good. But that was nothing compared with the charge itself—enough to damn any man! I had investments, mortgages, but how he succeeded in tying up those properties in a night, destroy the neighbourhood, cut their value in two, is what dazes me. The power of the man is beyond me—I can't understand it."
"I can understand it all," she answered, "only you've injured him more than I ever did."