There is a woman--look you, it is a sad, sad story hers.
She is ill and dying in a room a little way down the street. But yes,
I am sure she is dying--of heart disease it is. She came here first when
the illness took her, but she could not afford to stay. She went to
those cheaper lodgings down the street. She used to be on the stage
over in the States, and then she came back here, and there was a man--
married to him or not I do not know, and I will not think. Well, the
man--the brute--he left her when she got ill--but yes, forsook her
absolutely! He was a land-agent or something like that, and all very
fine to your face, to promise and to pretend--just make-believe. When
her sickness got worse, off he went with 'Au revoir, my dear--I will be
back to supper.' Supper! If she'd waited for her supper till he came
back, she'd have waited as long as I've done for the fortune the gipsy
promised me forty years ago. Away he went, the rogue, without a thought
of her, and with another woman. That's what hurt her most of all.
Straight from her that could hardly drag herself about--ah, yes, and has
been as handsome a woman as ever was!--straight from her he went to a
slut.
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