"Yes," she whispered; "Just there. I see him now always falling!"
How she said that! With what a strange gentle despair! In this girl of
evil life, who had brought on them this tragedy, what was it which moved
him to a sort of unwilling compassion?
"You look very young," he said.
"I am twenty."
"And you are fond of--my brother?"
"I would die for him."
Impossible to mistake the tone of her voice, or the look in her eyes,
true deep Slav eyes; dark brown, not blue as he had thought at first.
It was a very pretty face--either her life had not eaten into it yet,
or the suffering of these last hours had purged away those marks;
or perhaps this devotion of hers to Larry. He felt strangely at sea,
sitting there with this child of twenty; he, over forty, a man of the
world, professionally used to every side of human nature. But he said,
stammering a little:
"I--I have come to see how far you can save him. Listen, and just answer
the questions I put to you."
She raised her hands, squeezed them together, and murmured:
"Oh! I will answer anything."
"This man, then--your--your husband--was he a bad man?"
"A dreadful man."
"Before he came here last night, how long since you saw him?"
"Eighteen months.
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