She was thumping now with the sobs she kept under her voice.
"Why, Hattie," he said, his drawl not quickened, "you don't mean that!"
"I do! You're a ruiner of lives! Her life! Mine! You're a rotten apple that can speck every one it touches."
"That's hard, Hattie, but I reckon you're not all wrong."
"Oh, that softy Southern talk won't get us anywhere, Morton. The very sound of it sickens me now. You're like a terrible sickness I once had. I'm cured now. I don't know what you want here, but whatever it is you might as well go. I'm cured!"
He sat forward in his chair, still twirling the soft brown hat. He was dressed like that. Softly. Good-quality loosely woven stuffs. There was still a tan down of persistent youth on the back of his neck. But his hands were old, the veins twisted wiring, and his third finger yellowly stained, like meerschaum darkening.
"Grantin' everything you say, Hattie—and I'm holdin' no brief for myself—I've been the sick one, not you. Twenty years I've been down sick with hookworm."
"With devilishness."
"No, Hattie. It's the government's diagnosis. Hookworm. Been a sick man all my life with it. Funny thing, though, all those years in Rio knocked it out of me."
"Faugh!"