He was aware of the fact that she wasn't really looking at him anymore, although she was looking in his direction. He used the opportunity to study her body language. Since she spoke in terms of days rather than weeks or months, he figured the death of her family had not been that long ago, though he had to allow for the journey here. Her body language filled in the rest. A tension in her breathing and a propensity to disconnect that suggested that the grief, or even the awareness of what had happened, had hardly been processed.

When the tears did come, he averted his eyes and ate the rest of his bread, pretending he had not noticed. He wasn't uncomfortable with emotion. He had seen plenty of it at the asylum. But he also did not want to intrude on something private. Still, when he caught her wiping away her tears from the corner of his eye, he automatically went into alienist mode. He swallowed the bread. "It might well feel like a haze for some time, but it is important you try not to suppress your feelings. Grief is both natural and important for healing."