He shook his head. It was the first movement he had made since she began her story.
This apparently reassured her, for she proceeded at once to say:
"Mother Duda had never told me anything about herself. It scared me then when one morning I found sitting at the breakfast table a man who she said was her son. He was big and pale looking, and had a slight swelling on one side of his neck which made me sick; but I tried to be polite, though I did not like him at all and had a sudden feeling of having no home any more. That was the first day. The next two were worse. For he didn't hate me as I did him, and wouldn't leave the house while I was there, saying he could not bear to be away from his mother. But he skipped out quick enough after I was gone, so the neighbors said, and sometimes I think he followed me. Mother Duda wasn't like her old self at all. She loved him, he was her son, but she didn't like all he did. She wanted him to work; he wouldn't work. He sat and stared at me as the gipsy king used to stare, and if I grew red and hot it was from shame and fear and horror of the great throat I saw growing from day to day, and which would some time be like his mother's. He knew I didn't like him, but he wasn't good like Mother Duda, and told me one day that he was going to make me his wife, whether I wanted him to or not, and talked about a great secret, and the big man he would be some day. This made me angry, and I said that all the bigness he would ever have would be in his neck. At which he struck me, right across the ear, hard, so hard that I fell on the floor with a scream, and Mother Duda came running. He was sorry then and threw down the thing he had in his hand; but the harm had been done and I was sick a month and had doctors and awful pain, and when I was well again I couldn't hear a sound with that ear. Hans wasn't there while I was ill; I shouldn't have got well if he had been; but he came back when I was up again and was very meek though he didn't stop looking at me. I thought I would run away one day, and went out without my basket, but after I had tried two whole days to get work and couldn't, I went back. Mother Duda almost squeezed the heart out of me for joy, and Hans went down on his knees and promised not to do or say anything more that I didn't like. He even promised to go to work, but his work was of a queer kind. It kept him in his little room and meant spending money, and not getting it. Men came to see him and were locked up with him in his little room. And if he went out, he locked the door and took the key away, and said great times were coming and that I would be glad to marry him some day, whether his neck was big or small. But I knew I shouldn't and kept very close to Mother Duda and begged her to get me a new home, and she promised and I was feeling happier, when one day Hans was called out by a man and went away so fast that he forgot to lock his door, and Mother Duda and I went into the room, and it was then that the thing happened which spoiled all my life. I don't understand it. I never did, for no one could tell me anything after that day. Mother Duda had gone up to a table and was moving things about, trying to see what they were, when everything turned black, the room shook, and I was whirling all about, trying to take hold of things which seemed to be falling about me, till I too fell. When I knew anything, there was lots of people looking at me; people of the house, men, women, and children, but what was strangest of all was the awful stillness. No one made any sound—nothing made any sound, though I saw an old book-shelf tumble down from the wall while I was looking, and people moved about and opened their lips and seemed to be talking. Had Hans struck me again? I began to think so, and got up from the floor where I was lying and tried to call out, but my voice made no noise though people looked around as if it had, and I felt an awful fright, not only for myself but for Mother Duda, who was being carried out of the door by two men, and who did not move at all and who never moved again. Poor Mother Duda, she was killed and I was deaf. I knew it after a little while, but I don't know what did it; something that Hans had; something that Mother Duda touched—a square something—I had just caught a glimpse of it in Mother Duda's hand when the room flew into a wreck and I became what I am now."
"Dynamite," murmured Ransom; then paused and had a small struggle with his heart, for she was looking up into his face, demanding sympathy with Georgian's eyes; and being close together on the short seat, he could not help but feel her shudders and share the intense excitement which choked her.
"Oh," she cried, as he laid his hand a moment on her arm and then took it away again, "one minute to hear! the next to find the world all still, always still,—a poor girl—not knowing how to read or write! But you cannot care about that; you cannot care about me. It's sister you want to hear about, how she came to find me; how we came here for new and terrible things to happen; always for new and terrible things to happen which I don't understand.
"Hans never came back. All sorts of policemen came into the house, doctors came, priests came, but no Hans. Mother Duda was buried, I rode in a coach at the funeral, but still no Hans. The old life was over, and when the food was all gone from the shelves, I took my little basket and went out, not meaning to come back again. And I did not. I sold my basket out; got a handful of pennies and went to the market to get something to eat. Then I went into a park, where there were benches, and sat down to rest. I did not know of any place to go to and began to cry, when a lady stopped before me, and I looked up and saw myself.
"I thought I was dreaming or had the fever again, as when I was sick with my ear, and I thought it was myself as I would look in heaven, for she had such beautiful clothes on and looked so happy. But when she talked, I could see her lips move and I couldn't hear; and I knew that I was just in the park with my empty basket and my onion and bread, and that the lady was a lady and no one I knew, only so like what I had seen of myself in the glass that I was shaking all over, and she was shaking all over, and neither of us could look away. And still her lips moved, and seeing her at last look frightened and angry that I didn't answer, I spoke and said that I was deaf; that I was very sorry that I couldn't hear because we looked so much alike, though she was a great lady and I was a very, very poor girl who hadn't any home or any friends, or anything to wear or eat but what she saw. At this her eyes grew bigger even than before, and she tried to talk some more, and when I shook my head she took hold of my arm and began drawing me away, and I went and we got on the cars, and she took me to a house and into a room where she took away my basket and put me in a chair, and took off first her hat, then my own, and showed me the two heads in a glass, and then looked at me so hard that I cried out, 'Sister,' which made her jump up and put her hand on her heart, then look at me again harder and harder, till I remembered way back in my life, and I said:
"'When I was a little girl I had a sister they called my twin. That was before I lived in the woods with the gipsies. Are you that sister grown up? The place where we played together had a tall fence with points at the top. There were flowers and there were bushes with currants on them all round the fence.'
"She made a sudden move, and I felt her arms about my neck. I think she cried a little. I didn't, I was too glad. I knew she was that sister the moment our faces touched, and I knew she would care for me, and that I needn't go back into the streets any more. So I kissed her and talked a good deal and told her what I've been telling, and she tried to answer, tried as you did to write, but all I could understand was that she meant to keep me, but not in the place where we were, and that I was to go out again. But she fixed me up a little before we went out, and she bought me some things, so that I looked different. Then we went into another house, where she talked with a woman for a long time, and then sat down with me and moved her lips very patiently, motioning me to watch and try to understand. But I was frightened and couldn't. So she gave up and, kissing me, made motions with her hands which I understood better; she wanted me to stay there while she went away, and I promised to if she would come back soon. At this she took out her watch. I was pleased with the watch, and she let me look at it, and inside against the cover I saw a picture. You know whose it was."