"Well, what else? Did Charlie Grant love me?"
"Yes. No doubt of it."
"But he loved Bessie afterwards."
"Yes. She lived the thing through with him. She built up something, I fancy. He probably remembered you as I did, all pink ribbons and fluff; but she helped him rear his house of life."
"And my husband didn't love me and I didn't love my husband," the old lady mused. "Well, Billy, it's almost the end of the play. I wish I understood it better. And I've written a naughty book, and I'm going to be comfortable on the money from it. And you wish I hadn't, don't you?"
He saw how frail she looked and answered mercifully,—
"I don't care much about the book, dear. Don't let's talk of that."
"You wish I hadn't written it!"
"I wish you hadn't been so infernally bored as to think of writing it."
"And I'll bet a dollar you wish you'd come back and found me reconciled to life and death, and reading daily texts out of little pious books, and knitting mufflers for sailors, instead of seething with all sorts of untimely devilishnesses. Don't you, Billy?"