I can't deny that Marcus Antonius Saterlee was touched by his son's epistle. But he was not moved out of reason.
"The girl's mother," he said to himself, "is a painted, divorced jade." And he thought with pleasure of the faith, patience, and rectitude of the three gentle companions whom he had successively married and buried. "There was never any divorce in the Saterlee blood," he had prided himself. "Man or woman, we stick by our choice till he or she" (he was usually precise) "turns up his or her toes. Not till then do we think of anybody else. But then we do, because it is not good to live alone, especially in a small community in Southern California."
He glanced once more at the showy lady across the aisle. She had finished her chicken wing, and was dipping her fingers in a finger-bowl, thus displaying to sparkling advantage a number of handsome rings.
"My boy's girl's mother a painted actress," he muttered as he looked. "Not if I know it." And then he muttered: "You'd look like an actress if you was painted."
Though the words can not have been distinguished, the sounds were audible.
"Sir?" said the lady, stiffly but courteously.
"Nothing, Ma'am," muttered Mark Anthony, much abashed. "I'm surprised to see so much water in this arid corner of the world, where I have often suffered for want of it. I must have been talking to myself to that effect. I hope you will excuse me."
The lady looked out of the window—not hers, but Saterlee's.
"It does look," she said, "as if the waters had divorced themselves from the bed of ocean."
She delivered this in a quick but telling voice. Saterlee was shocked at the comparison.