"Hates ye," he repeated curiously. "What's he hate ye for?"
"Because," said Tira, bound to keep quietly on in this new way of reason with him, "I left him. An' I left him 'fore he got tired o' me. He never'd overlook that."
"You left him, did ye?" he repeated. "Then that proves you was with him, or ye couldn't ha' left him."
"Why, Isr'el," said she, her clear gaze on his turbid answering one, "I told you. I told you long 'fore you married me. First time you ever mentioned it, I told you, so's to have things fair an' square. I told you, Isr'el."
He said nothing, but she knew the answer at the back of his mind, and it seemed to her wise now to provoke it, to dare the accusation and meet it, not as she always had, by silence, but a passionate testimony.
"You said," she continued, "it shouldn't make no difference, what I'd done 'fore you married me. You said we couldn't help the past, but we could what's comin' to us. An' I thought you was an angel, Isr'el, with your religion an' all. Not many men would ha' said that. I didn't know one. An' we were married an' you—changed."
"Yes," he said. His hands were shaking as they did at the beginning of his rages, but Tira, embarked on a course she had long been coming to, was the more calm. "Yes, I changed, didn't I? An' when d' I change? When that"—he paused and seemed to choke down the word he would have given the child—"when that creatur' in there turned into the livin' pictur' of the man that drew up here this day. Can you deny he's the image of him?"
"No," said Tira, looking at him squarely. "He is the image of him."
"What do folks think about it?" he asked her. "What do you s'pose the neighbors think? What'll it be when it grows worse an' worse? What'll the school children say when he's old enough to go to school? They'll see it, too, the little devils. The livin' image, they'll say, o' 'Gene Martin."
Tira laid her work on the table in front of her. The moment of restraining him had failed her, but another moment had come. This she had seen approaching for many months and had pushed away from her.