talking about her to some soldiers and telling them so. No doubt they
knew her. They were laughing. They were going to meet in a pot-house
to drink to her memory."
A great deal of this was my invention. Silence followed, profound
silence. She did not stir.
"And is it better to die in a hospital?"
"Isn't it just the same? Besides, why should I die?" she added irritably.
"If not now, a little later."
"Why a little later?"
"Why, indeed? Now you are young, pretty, fresh, you fetch a high
price. But after another year of this life you will be very different--you
will go off."
"In a year?"
"Anyway, in a year you will be worth less," I continued malignantly.
"You will go from here to something lower, another house; a year later--
to a third, lower and lower, and in seven years you will come to a
basement in the Haymarket. That will be if you were lucky. But it would
be much worse if you got some disease, consumption, say ... and caught
a chill, or something or other. It's not easy to get over an illness in your
way of life. If you catch anything you may not get rid of it. And so you
would die."
"Oh, well, then I shall die," she answered, quite vindictively, and she
made a quick movement.
"But one is sorry."
"Sorry for whom?"
"Sorry for life."
Silence.
"Have you been engaged to be married? Eh?"
"What's that to you?"
"Oh, I am not cross-examining you. It's nothing to me. Why are you
so cross? Of course you may have had your own troubles. What is it to
me? It's simply that I felt sorry."
"Sorry for whom?"
"Sorry for you."
"No need," she whispered hardly audibly, and again made a faint movement.
That incensed me at once. What! I was so gentle with her, and she ....
"Why, do you think that you are on the right path?"
"I don't think anything."
"That's what's wrong, that you don't think. Realise it while there is still
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