Page:The Painted Veil - Maugham - 1925.djvu/193

 It did not seem worth while to lie. Her thoughts wandered strangely: on a sudden she saw that dead beggar at the foot of the compound wall. Why should she think of him? She did not sob: the tears streamed down her face, quite easily, from wide eyes. At last she answered the question. He had asked her if he was the child’s father.

“I don’t know,” she said.

He gave the ghost of a chuckle. It made Kitty shudder.

“It’s a bit awkward, isn’t it?”

His answer was characteristic, it was exactly what she would have expected him to say, but it made her heart sink. She wondered if he realised how hard it had been for her to tell the truth (at the same moment she recognised that it had not been in the least hard, but inevitable) and if he gave her credit for it. Her answer, I don’t know, I don’t know, hammered away in her head. It was impossible now to take it back. She got her handkerchief from her bag and dried her eyes. They did not speak. There was a syphon on the table by her bed and he got her a glass of water. He brought it to her and held the glass while she drank. She noticed how thin his hand was, it was a fine hand, slender, with long fingers, but now it was nothing but skin and bone; it trembled a little: he could control his face, but his hand betrayed him.

“Don’t mind my crying,” she said. “It’s nothing really; it’s only that I can’t help the water running out of my eyes.”

She drank the water and he put the glass