"Echoing me in that stupid way won't keep me from going on."
"Stupid? She calls it a stupid way. My God! My God! What agony!" Mrs. Farley almost shrieked out "agony." Her knotted hands clutched her flat breasts as if with hunger. Her voice was dully intense. Her wrinkled lids twitched.
Why does she twitch her face?
Alice's lips curled almost like a snarl. "You'll find me giving away and raving too if you don't watch out, Mamma. I can't stand too much of this."
Mrs. Farley opened her eyes slowly, but she kept her gaze vague against the solid antagonism of Alice's eyes. "I'm going back to my room now. I can't sleep, but I won't burden you any longer with the sight of me. You can tell your father I'm not going to trouble him any more. He can start his proceedings for divorce. I don't know what the Prices will say—what they will think. They probably imagined just as I did that the whole thing was over twelve years ago when I went through so much humiliation to save your father. It took the diabolical vileness of my own daughter to draw her father and this woman together again after we had a happy home and were all at peace."
"I didn't have a happy home. Papa hasn't a happy home."
"I know I'm vile. Guilty of all manner of vileness. It was vile of me to slave and work as I've done and take all of the responsibility off Laurence's hands and slave for Winnie and the children."
"I have nothing to do with Winnie and the children."
"I don't know what charge your father can bring. Then as soon as he gets it he can rush off and marry that thing. To judge by the way she was going when I saw her she must be middle-aged and fat by now, but your father won't mind so long as she's not me. Then my daughter will be freed of me. Winnie and Laurence can get somebody else to fetch and carry and clean up for their children. As you say, I have no right here. I ought not to be alive. But you can tell your father how it is and he'll find a way to get rid of me."
Alice was still like a mountain. "That's all right, Mamma. I'll tell Papa what you say—that you are willing for him to arrange for a divorce. Is that all right?"