"Oh, come off, Marie. I'd know you if you were twenty years older and
fifty pounds heavier--and that's going some. Bimmer and two or three
others are not so sure--won't bet on it--for twenty years, and, let me
see--you weighed about a hundred and thirty-five--perfect figger--in the
old days. Must weigh two seventy-five now. That makes one forty-five
pounds extra. Well, that and time, and white hair, would change pretty
near any woman, particularly one with small features. You look a real old
lady, and you can't be mor'n forty-five. How did you manage the white
hair? Bleach?"

Ruyler felt his heart turn over. The frozen blood pounded in his brain
and distended his own muscles, his mouth unclosed to let his breath
escape. Then he became aware that the woman had recovered herself and
moved forward, displacing the familiar elbow. She turned imperiously to
the motorman.

"Stop at the corner," she said. "And if this man attempts to follow me
please send back a policeman. He is intoxicated."

The car stopped at the corner of the street opposite the site of the
old Saint Mary's Cathedral, a street where once had been that row of
small and evil cottages where French women, painted, scantily dressed
in a travesty of the evening gown, called to the passer-by through the
slats of old-fashioned green shutters. That had been before Ruyler's
day, but he knew the history of the neighborhood, and this man's
interest in it. He was not surprised to hear Bisbee laugh aloud as
Madame Delano, who stepped off the car with astonishing agility,
waddled down the now respectable street. But she held her head
majestically and did not look back.