"I don't know, Dick. Perhaps I must."
They went on a little farther.
"Molly, I wanted to talk to you about something else, but I must talk about this evening. It's been a very remarkable evening. I am enriched by a kind of stepmother—a stepmother before the event, so to speak, not after—a relationship not in any dictionary. I am the child of a younger Sultana. Who would expect to meet in a London hotel, in the person of a middle-aged millionairess, the elder Sultana?"
"Ought one to be sorry for you, Dick? You couldn't have a better stepmother."
"Not sorry, exactly. But she recalls the sins of the forefathers. I have always understood that he was that kind of person. My mother, who took it wrathfully, was careful that I should know the kind of person he was. Her history halved the fifth commandment. This good lady takes it tearfully."
"She was thinking of her own dead child. For a moment she thought you were her son."
"Does one weep for a child four and twenty years after its death? There was more than a dead child in those tears."
"It was your playing, then. You never played so well. The violin talked all the time. It made me glow only to think of your birds and breezes and flowers."
"I shall call on her to-morrow. She wants to talk about it again. Molly, it's a wonderful thing."