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THE MAN. One of them as you knew her. The other as she became when you flung her aside, and she withered into an old woman.

TARLETON.She’d have done that anyhow, my lad. We all grow old. Look at me! [Seeing that the man is embarrassed by his pistol in fumbling for the photographs with his left hand in his breast pocket] Let me hold the gun for you.

THE MAN. [retreating to the worktable] Stand back. Do you take me for a fool?

TARLETON.Well, youre a little upset, naturally. It does you credit.

THE MAN. Look here, upon this picture and on this. [He holds out the two photographs like a hand at cards, and points to them with the pistol].

TARLETON.Good. Read Shakespear: he has a word for every occasion. [He takes the photographs, one in each hand, and looks from one to the other, pleased and interested, but without any sign of recognition] What a pretty girl! Very pretty. I can imagine myself falling in love with her when I was your age. I wasnt a bad-looking young fellow myself in those days. [Looking at the other] Curious that we should both have gone the same way.

THE MAN. You and she the same way! What do you mean?

TARLETON.Both got stout, I mean.

THE MAN. Would you have had her deny herself food?

TARLETON.No: it wouldnt have been any use. It’s constitutional. No matter how little you eat you put on flesh if youre made that way. [He resumes his study of the earlier photograph].

THE MAN. Is that all the feeling that rises in you at the sight of the face you once knew so well?

TARLETON.[too much absorbed in the portrait to heed him] Funny that I cant remember! Let this be a lesson to you, young man. I could go into court tomorrow and swear I never saw that face before in my life if it wasnt for that brooch [pointing to the photograph]. Have you got that brooch, by the way? [The man again resorts to his breast pocket]. You seem to carry the whole family property in that pocket.

THE MAN. [producing a brooch] Here it is to prove my bona fides.

TARLETON.[pensively putting the photographs on the table and taking the brooch] I bought that brooch in Cheapside from a man with a yellow wig and a cast in his left eye. Ive never set eyes on him from that day to this. And yet I remember that man; and I cant remember your mother.

THE MAN. Monster! Without conscience! without even memory! You left her to her shame–

TARLETON.[throwing the brooch on the table and rising pepperily] Come, come, young man! none of that. Respect the romance of your mother’s youth. Dont you start throwing stones at her. I dont recall her features just at this moment; but Ive no doubt she was kind to me and we were happy together. If you have a word to say against her, take yourself out of my house and say it elsewhere.

THE MAN. What sort of a joker are you? Are you trying to put me in the wrong, when you have to answer to me for a crime that would make every honest man spit at you as you passed in the street if I were to make it known?