Read this passage.

“There is a look about you,” he said. “It lies in your eyes and the mark is on your face. What is it?”
“Would you not grieve too,” I said, “if the woman who gave you birth was no more than a handful of dust?”
“It is not that alone. The hurt is of longer standing. Why do you lie?”
I looked up and his eyes were on me.
Surely, I thought, my mother has told him, for he knows; but as if he guessed my thoughts he shook his head.
“No, I do not know. Tell me.”
I held back. He was a foreigner, and although I no longer stood in awe of him, still the secret had been long locked up in my breast and would not come out easily. “I have no sons,” I said at last, heavily. “Only one child, a girl."

Why is the narrator at first unable to state what troubles her?


She is unsure of what troubles her.

She is too grieved by the death of her mother to speak.

The man questioning her is a foreigner.

She is too awestruck to speak.