That was all of Hattie
that looked out. Except her eyes. They were good gray eyes with popping
whites now, because of a trick of blackening the lids. But the irises
were in their pools, inviolate.

"Well, Hattie, I reckon I'd have known you even under black."

"I thought you were in Rio."

"Got to hankering after the States, Hattie."

"I read of a Morris Sebree died in Brazil. Sometimes I used to think
maybe it might have been a misprint--and--that--you--were--the--one."

"No, no. 'Live and kickin'. Been up around here a good while."

"Where?"

"Home. N'Orleans. M' mother died, Hattie, God rest her bones. Know it?"

"No."

"Cancer."

It was a peculiar silence. A terrible word like that was almost slowly
soluble in it. Gurgling down.

"O-oh!"

"Sort of gives a fellow the shivers, Hattie, seeing you kinda hidin'
behind yourself like this. But I saw you come in the theater to-night.
You looked right natural. Little heavier."

"What do you want?"

"Why, I guess a good many things in general and nothing in particular,
as the sayin' goes. You don't seem right glad to see me, honey."

"Glad!" said Hattie, and laughed as if her mirth were a dice shaking in
a box of echoes.

"Your hair's right red yet. Looked mighty natural walkin' into the
theater to-night. Take off those kinks, honey."

She reached for her cleansing cream, then stopped, her eyes full of the
foment of torture.

"What's my looks to you?"

"You've filled out."

"You haven't," she said, putting down the cold-cream jar. "You haven't
aged an hour. Your kind lies on life like it was a wall in the sun. A
wall that somebody else has built for you stone by stone."

"I reckon you're right in some ways, Hattie. There's been a meanderin'
streak in me somewheres. You and m' mother, God rest her bones, had a
different way of scoldin' me for the same thing. Lot o' Huck Finn in
me."

"Don't use bad-boy words for vicious, bad-man deeds!"

"But you liked me. Both of you liked me, honey. Only two women I ever
really cared for, too. You and m' mother."

Her face might have been burning paper, curling her scorn for him.

"Don't try that, Morton. It won't work any more. What used to infatuate
me only disgusts me now. The things I thought I--loved--in you, I loathe
now. The kind of cancer that killed your mother is the kind that eats
out the heart. I never knew her, never even saw her except from a
distance, but I know, just as well as if I'd lived i