So far as he knew he had never exchanged a word with one of them, and had often listened with impatience to the reminiscences of his San Francisco friends, now married and at least intermittently decent, of the famous ladies who once had reigned in the gay night life of San Francisco.
And his mother-in-law! The mother of his wife! Her name was Marie.

In that chaos of flesh an interested eye might discover the ruins of beauty.

Her hair, he knew, had been black.

He recalled the terror expressed in every line of that mountainous figure--which may well have been perfect twenty years ago.

The green pallor of her cheek! And he had long felt, rather than knew, that she possessed magnificent powers of bluff.