“Why do you wish to know?” he inquired quietly.  “Is it because you are a woman?”

“I am here because I am a woman.  Well, then.”

He looked at her, still silently, for a time.  “She is dead,” he said slowly.  “Can’t you let her lie dead?”

“No.  Is she out there?  Tell me.”

“No.”

“Is she dead?  Who was she?”

“I have told you, I am alone here.  I have told you, I’ve been alone, all my life, until you came.  Isn’t that enough?”

“Yes, you’ve said that; but that was not the truth.”

“It depends upon what you mean by the truth.”

“The man who could do what you have done with me would not stop at anything.  How could I believe a word you said?” Then, on the instant, much as she had cause to hate him, she half regretted her speech.  She saw a swift flush spring to his cheek under the thin florid skin.  He moved his lips, but did not speak.  It was quite a while before he made reply.

“That isn’t just,” he said quietly.  “I wouldn’t lie to you, not even to get you.  If that’s the way you feel about me, I reckon there couldn’t, after all, be much between us.  I’ve got all the sins and faults of the world, but not just that one.  I don’t lie.”

“Then tell me.”

“No.  You’ve not earned it.  What would be the use, if you didn’t believe what I said?”

He held up the faded things before his eyes, turning them over calmly, looking at them directly, unshrinkingly.  She could not read what was in his mind.  Either he had courage or long accustomedness, she thought.

“I asked Sally,” she half smiled.

“Yes?”

“And I’ll ask her again.  I don’t want—­I can’t have, a—­a room which belongs to another woman, which has belonged to another.  I’ve not, all my life, been used to—­that sort of place, myself, you see.”

“You are entitled to first place.  Madam, wherever you are.  I don’t know what you have been.”  He pointed to her own garments, which lay across a chair.  “You don’t know what she has been;” he indicated these that he held in his hand.  “Very well.  What could a mere liar, a coward, do to arrange an understanding between two women so mysterious?  You sprang from the earth, from the sea, somewhere, I do not know how.  You are the first woman for me.  Is it not enough?”

“I told Sally, it might have been a sister, your mother—­”

“Dead long ago.  Out there.”  He nodded to the window.

“Which?” she demanded.

He turned to her full now, and put out a hand, touching the coverlid timidly almost.  “You are ill,” he said.  “Your eyes shine.  I know.  It’s the fever.  It isn’t any time now for you to talk.  Besides, until you believe me, I can not talk with you any more.  I’ve been a little rough, maybe, I don’t know; but as God made this world, those trees, that sun yonder, I never said a word to you yet that wasn’t true.  I’ve never wanted of you what wasn’t right, in my own creed.  Sometimes we have to frame up a creed all for ourselves, don’t you know that?  The world isn’t always run on the same lines everywhere.  It’s different, in places.”