"But not a wise one if he couldn't hold a creature like you."
"And my child! You talk about shine! Of course I know it is only her hair and eyes and now her little teeth, but sometimes it seems to me there is an actual iridescence to her. Just as real as the gold circlets the Italians loved to paint about heads they adored."
"Your head is—"
"You see, the fuzz of her curls gives that effect. Those new stereopticon views that move, that we used on the bills last week, show it—that aura off the hair. Even the nurses and Mrs. Dupree have remarked Zoe's. She's really the show child of the place, you know."
"By inheritance?"
"No. She's only like me about the eyes, and like—him—in the honey color of her hair. Hers is as brilliant and curly as mine is dull and smooth. And she's so big. So golden and burstingly big. I can't look at her without fairly gasping, 'can this be mine'!"
"And to think a man let you go, once he had you captured."
"He didn't let go. I went. I can never hear him referred to slightingly without feeling myself a rotter not to explain. My husband was so terribly all he should have been, Mr. Visigoth. As decent and God-fearing a man as ever—chewed his beefsteak with his temples."
He threw back his head for one of his sustained laughs.
"It's horrid of me to belittle him. Let me explain further."