"What's my looks to you?" "You've filled out." "You haven't," she said, putting down the cold-cream jar. "You haven't aged an hour. Your kind lies on life like it was a wall in the sun. A wall that somebody else has built for you stone by stone." "I reckon you're right in some ways, Hattie. There's been a meanderin' streak in me somewheres. You and m' mother, God rest her bones, had a different way of scoldin' me for the same thing. Lot o' Huck Finn in me." "Don't use bad-boy words for vicious, bad-man deeds!" "But you liked me. Both of you liked me, honey. Only two women I ever really cared for, too. You and m' mother." Her face might have been burning paper, curling her scorn for him. "Don't try that, Morton. It won't work any more. What used to infatuate me only disgusts me now. The things I thought I--loved--in you, I loathe now. The kind of cancer that killed your mother is the kind that eats out the heart. I never knew her, never even saw her except from a distance, but I know, just as well as if I'd lived in that fine big house with her all those years in New Orleans, that you were the sickness that ailed her--lying, squandering, gambling, no-'count son! If she and I are the only women you ever cared for, thank God that there aren't any more of us to suffer from you. Morton, when I read that a Morris Sebree had died in Brazil, I hoped it was you! You're no good! You're no good!" 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!" "I'm a new man since I'm well of it."