"
She shook her shoulders in an irrepressible shudder.
"I wish he was dead," she said. "I never go out but what I'm afraid I
shall meet him, or come back late but what I think I shall find him
standin' against the street door. I wish he was dead."
"I knew him. He is dead."
She looked at him, at first questioning, then awe-stricken.
"Then he was struck? Lord!"
Her red mouth gaped.
"It was in the papers," Julian said, "At the European Hotel."
"That was the place. Lord! I never see the papers. Dead is he? I am
glad."
Her relief was obvious, yet almost shocking, and Julian could not
question her good faith. She had certainly not known. He longed to find
out more about her relations with Marr, and his treatment of her, but
she shied away from the subject. Obviously she really loathed and
detested the remembrance of him.
"But why do you keep his photograph?" Julian asked at last.
The lady seemed puzzled.
"I dunno," she said at last. "I don't seem as if I could burn it. But if
he is gone--dead, I mean--really--"
"He is."
"I know."
She sat thoughtfully. Then she said:
"He didn't look a fellow to die. It seems funny. No; he didn't look it."
And then she dropped the subject, and nothing would induce her to
return to it.
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