"Well—to keep me from seeing you."
"Yes. And because I asked your father to let me educate you, since he wasn't doing it himself. I wanted to send you to a school in Paris for two years."
"I didn't know. They never told me. What made you want to do all that for me?"
"It wasn't for you. It was for the little girl who used to go for walks with me…. She was the nicest little girl. She said the jolliest things in the dearest little voice. 'How can a man like you care to talk to a child like me?'"
"Did I say that? I don't remember."
"She said it."
"It sounds rather silly of her."
"She wasn't silly. She was clever as they make them. And she was pretty too. She had lots of hair, hanging down her back. Curling…. And they take her away from me and I wait three years for her. She knew I was waiting. And when I come back to her she won't look at me. She sits on the fender and stares at the fire. She wears horrible black clothes."
"Because Papa's dead."
"She goes and cuts her hair all off. That isn't because your father's dead."