"Had you seen that photograph before?" he asked her.
She, unable to answer, kept her face in her hands.
"Don't worry," he said. "We're all more or less that way. We're none of us perfect."
Still she did not answer. Then he went on, almost without thinking, as he studied the rather fetching young gentleman with the long black hair and bold black eyes, and the impudent, handsome, languid lips:
"You're a bit like him, too. You're a bit like him in the look of your eyes. I bet he wasn't tall either. I bet he was rather small."
Mary took her hands from her face and looked up fierce and angry.
"You have no feeling," she said.
"I have," he replied, smiling slightly. "But life seems to me too rummy to get piqued about it. Think of him leaving a son like the fellow I saw under the umbrella! Think of it! Such a dandy! And that his son! And then having you for a daughter when he was getting quite on in years. Do you remember him?"
"How can you talk to me like that?" she said.
"But why? It's life. It's how it was. Do you remember your father?"