A roll and a cup of coffee had been enough, and often too much, for him.

Yet now he could not wait to eat the soup with a spoon, but lifted the bowl and took a long draught of it, and set it down with a sigh of content.

Then he broke bread into the soup--large pieces of black oat bread--until the bowl was a mass of luscious pulp.

This he ate almost ravenously, his eye wandering avidly the while to the small piece of meat beside the bowl.
What meat was it?
It looked like venison, yet summer was not the time for venison.

What did it matter! Jo sat on a bench beside the fire, his face turned towards his guest, dreading the moment when the man he had nursed and cared for, with whom he had eaten and drunk for so long, should know the truth about himself.