I murmured some banal
apologia, miserably aware that one set of words is as futile as
another when one has broken a woman's heart.
"You never knew I loved you?" she went on in the same bitter
undertone. "What kind of woman did you take me for? I have
accepted help from you to enable me to live in this flat--do you
imagine I could have done such a thing without loving you? I
should have thought it was obvious in a thousand ways."
The fire getting low, she took up the scoop for coals.
Mechanically I relieved her of the thing and fulfilled the
familiar task. Neither spoke for a long time. She remained
there and I went to the window. It had begun to rain. A
barrel-organ below was playing some horrible music-hall air, and
every vibrant note was like a hammer on one's nerves. The
grinder's bedraggled Italian wife perceiving me at the window
grinned up at me with the national curve of the palm. She had a
black eye which the cacophonous fiend had probably given her, and
she grinned like a happy child of nature.
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