“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.”

“Hookworm!  That’s an easy word for ingrained no-’countness, deviltry, and deceit.  It wasn’t hookworm came into the New Orleans stock company where I was understudying leads and getting my chance to play big things.  It wasn’t hookworm put me in a position where I had to take anything I could get!  So that instead of finding me playing leads you find me here—­black-face!  It was a devil!  A liar!  A spendthrift, no-’count son out of a family that deserved better.  I’ve cried more tears over you than I ever thought any woman ever had it in her to cry.  Those months in that boarding house in Peach Tree Street down in New Orleans!  Peach Tree Street!  I remember how beautiful even the name of it was when you took me there—­lying—­and how horrible it became to me.  Those months when I used to see your mother’s carriage drive by the house twice a day and me crying my eyes out behind the curtains.