eight years ago, but I didn’t see the farm then,” he said finally.
“I got married while I was West.”
His audience of one started slightly.
“She’s dead now,” he added abruptly.
“Oh, Cousin Lorando—”
“You needn’t bother about the sympathy, my dear, for there’s none needed. I hadn’t been with her for a good while. I saw her in a concert-hall out there, and she had curly hair and a kind of taking way with her, and so I married her. I’d just made a big hit, and she wanted to come to New York, and we came. We went to a big hotel, and it was dress-suits for me and diamonds for her, and we drove in a carriage in the park in the afternoon. She liked it, but I soon got enough. I don’t care much for that sort of thing. She wanted to go to the theatre and see the girls that she’d been one of, you see, from the other side of the curtain. And she saw a man there she used to know, and—well, it turned out she liked him better, that’s all.”
