“What is it, then?” he asked. Suddenly she broke away, wiped her eyes, regained her composure, and went and sat in a chair.
“Father hit me,” she announced, sitting bunched up, rather like a ruffled bird, her eyes very bright.
“What for?” he said.
She looked away, and would not answer. There was a pitiful redness about her sensitive nostrils, and her quivering lips.
“Why?” he repeated, in his strange, soft, penetrating voice.
She looked round at him, rather defiantly.
“Because I said I was going to be married tomorrow, and he bullied me.”
“Why did he bully you?”
Her mouth dropped again, she remembered the scene once more, the tears came up.
“Because I said he didn’t care—and he doesn’t, it’s only his domineeringness that’s hurt—” she said, her mouth pulled awry by her weeping, all the time she spoke, so that he almost smiled, it seemed so childish. Yet it was not childish, it was a mortal conflict, a deep wound.