I looked. I saw a hand which was a claw, a strong, shriveled thing with long, dirty nails and a vulturous suggestion. It was not a pleasant sight. On the third finger of the left hand, though, was a slight gleam amid the carnivorous dullness. There was a slender band of gold there, a ring worn down to narrowness and thinness. I turned to Harlson, but he spoke first:
"Do you see that old wedding ring?"
"Yes."
"It's queer. It's good, too. There's a streak of what was good left in everything, it seems to me. I'm going to talk to her."
"Don't do it. She'll throw the plate in your face."
"No, she won't." And he rose and went over to the table of the beldame and sat down beside her. She looked up at him glaringly. He did not smile, nor, apparently, make any apology or excuse, but began talking to her, looking at the ring, and saying I know not what. And I watched that miserable old woman's face and wondered. There was more than one emotion shown—fierce resentment at first, then the half fear of the hound or the hound-bitch yielding to the master, and then the yielding of the heart, not touched, perhaps, for a quarter of a century. Harlson talked. The woman did not speak for minutes, then made some short reply, and then, a little later, there were tears in her old foxy eyes.
He rose, glared at the one or two hard-faced waiters who had ventured near him, and took upon a card something she said. Then he came back to me as the old woman left the place.
"Queer-looking, wasn't she?" he said.
"Decidedly," said I. "What were you talking about?"
"Oh, nothing but the ring. It's wonderful how they always wear the ring when they have the right to."