"Tell me, is it so bad as that?"
She put that question sadly, without bitterness. The famous--or
notorious--de Barral had lost his rigidity now. He was bent. Nothing
more deplorably futile than a bent poker. He said nothing. She added
gently, suppressing an uneasy remorseful sigh:
"And it might have been worse. You might have found no one, no one in
all this town, no one in all the world, not even me! Poor papa!"
She made a conscience-stricken movement towards him thinking: "Oh! I am
horrible, I am horrible." And old de Barral, scared, tired, bewildered
by the extraordinary shocks of his liberation, swayed over and actually
leaned his head on her shoulder, as if sorrowing over his regained
freedom.
The movement by itself was touching. Flora supporting him lightly
imagined that he was crying; and at the thought that had she smashed in a
quarry that shoulder, together with some other of her bones, this grey
and pitiful head would have had nowhere to rest, she too gave way to
tears. They flowed quietly, easing her overstrained nerves. Suddenly he
pushed her away from him so that her head struck the side of the cab,
pushing himself away too from her as if something had stung him.
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