The Tree of Life

The Tree of LifeExpectation (gold foil)Death and Life
spectacle of his impotence. For where in the past he had been of limp manhood with Miss Sally Ann (so much so that he now feared their children were of extramarital paternity), and potent only with "the likes of O.B.G.'s daughter," currently he found himself prone to failure with the wanton Georgina, but tumesced at the mere idea of a proper faithful wife, such as once he'd fondly thought was his.
"She weren't nothing but a floozy, though," he would declare, "like Stacey Stoker and all the rest. Onliest decent gal I ever knew was old O.B.G.'s daughter -- which I went and drug her in the muck anyhow, back in the old days. She'd of been pure as snow, that gal, if I hadn't made a black whore of her."
Whether Georgina was G. Herrold's daughter, and G. Herrold and "Old Black George" were the same person, was still unclear, as was the extent to which the woman's present motives were actual admissions of hers or Greene's own conjecture. For though he declared himself pleased "to of had his eyes opened," as he put it, to the