"You'd never be called thief. Could you not do it?" she tempted him, taking pleasure in her own pain.
"She's not a piece of goods," he said, and fell into a silence; but the muscles of his cheek were twitching, and at the sight of that her heart ached with a sickness of pity for him. She was all compassionate mother now, and she would have rent the world to get Theresa for him.
She broke the stillness with a laugh he did not like to hear.
"There's me," she said. "I'd get her for you." And her voice was venturesome, half afraid, ashamed of its own shame.
She saw the quick red leap to his eyes.
"Leave her alone!" he cried in anger. All the influences of his youth were strong on him. "But you'd never move her," he said, and his faith and his scorn stung her to a pang she hid from him.
"Eh, would I not?" she answered coolly. "This'll be why you've not been here, then?"
"I think it's why I nearly killed my father. It's easy blaming myself for nearly doing murder, but I see now that all these days I've been feeling murder towards that man she's going to marry. D'you know I've not seen the sky for weeks? I've been walking through a visible blackness. It's the truth I'm telling," he said simply. "And then to-day I came home, and found him drunk or mad, raving against my mother because she'd had a letter from old Webb, and one she'd read to him, as innocent and clean as Webb himself. And she stands there, smiling at him, stroking his hand, talking to him, as if he had a fever. If she'd had half a dozen children it would have been better for them both. Janet, it's pure self-indulgence in her, or was, and now it's just a habit. She's mothered him, and mothered him, because she has an endless power of giving, and he's gulped it all down, and will go on doing it till the end."
"But you didn't knock him down for that?"
"No; it was when he took Theresa's picture, and threw it on the fire, and said bad things about her. I saved it first, and then he went. I know he didn't mean it, I know he'd never think it—he's not that kind of beast—but he said it. And he was on the floor before I knew it, white, and with blood trickling. And I think my mother hated me that minute."