Page:O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories for 1919.pdf/63

Rh “Yes, mine. I know now—now that it’s safe for me to know. I was down at that village by the beach a year or so ago. I’m a Kain, of course, one of the crazy Kains, after all. John Sanderson was born in the village and lived there till his death. Only once that folks could remember had he been away, and that was when he took some papers to the city for Mrs. Kain to sign. He was caretaker at the old ‘Kain place’ the last ten years of his life, and deaf, they said, since his tenth year—‘deaf as a post.’ And they told me something else. They said there was a story that before my father, Daniel, married her, my mother had been an actress. An actress! You'll understand that I needed no one to tell me that!

“They told me that they had heard a story that she was a great actress. Dear God, if they could only know! When I think of that night and that setting, that scene! It killed her, and it got me over the wall”