“Of course I mean it.”
“But if we left Harry with her he’d starve and she’d leave him in a week.”
“Let him starve,” Sylvia cried. “He deserves to starve.”
“You hard-hearted little devil,” Monkley said. “After all, he is your father.”
“That’s what makes me hate him,” Sylvia declared. “He’s no right to be my father. He’s no right to make me think like that of him. He must be wrong to make me feel as I do about him.”
Monkley came close and took her hand. “Do you mean what you said about leaving them and going away with me?”
Sylvia looked at him, and, meeting his eyes, she shook her head. “No, of course I don’t really mean it, but why can’t you think of some way to stop all this? Why should we put up with it any longer? Make him turn her out into the street.”
Monkley laughed. “You are very young, aren’t you? Though I’ve thought once or twice lately that you seemed to be growing up.”
Again Sylvia caught his eyes and felt a little afraid, not really afraid, she said to herself, but uneasy, as if somebody she could not see had suddenly opened a door behind her.
“Don’t let’s talk about me, anyway,” she said. “Think of something to change things here.”