"It would gratify my curiosity. I should think you might do as much as
that for me."

"I'm doing a great deal for you as it is. I don't think you should ask for
more."

Her tone was one of reproach rather than of annoyance, and he was left
with a sense of having committed an indiscretion. The consciousness
brought with it the perception that in a measure he was growing used to
his position. He was beginning to take it for granted that this girl
should come and minister to his wants. She herself did it so simply, so
much as a matter of course, that the circumstance lost much of its
strangeness. Now and then he could detect some confusion in her manner as
she served him, but he could see too that she surmounted it, in view of
the fact that for him the situation was one of life and death. She was
clearly not indifferent to elementary social usages; she only saw that the
case was one in which they did not obtain. In his long, unoccupied hours
of darkness it distracted his thoughts from his own peril to speculate
about her; and when she appeared his questions were the more blunt because
of the small opportunity she allowed for asking them.

"Won't they miss you at home?" he inquired, on the next occasion when she
entered his cell.

She paused with a look of surprise.

"At home? Where do you mean?"

"Why--where you live; where your mother lives."