I don't think it is right for him to show an exaggerated preference for one child, she told herself. He doesn't love May! He exaggerates his feeling for her out of pique. Winnie could not forgive him for being kinder to May than she was.
She found a match. Among the shadows the invisible sun made patches of bronze light. In the dark the match flared like a long soft wound of flame. The gas rushed out of the jet with a thick hiss and the flame spread into a fan. It was a wing covered with yellow down, blue at the quill. The wind sucked at it soundlessly.
She walked to the window which the gas flame had already made dark. The sky was green-blue. Bunches of black leaves on the trees in the square cut the dim fiery horizon into twinkling segments. A telegraph pole rose up like a finger higher than the houses and appeared to lean heavily against the quiet beyond. Behind flecks of cloud putrescent stars shone as through flecks of foam on an enchanted sea.
Winnie pressed her head against the cold pane. Laurence, herself, old age. She would never be happy. A peaceful vanity took the place of her unrest. She realized an ethereal quality in herself which coincided with the whiteness of her little hands. She was aware of her hands, delicate and precious against her breast. Her breathing tightened. She did not want to remember the ugliness of the long illness she had had and to think of the operation which threatened her threw her into a panic. When people talked too much to her of death she only saw something ugly which she did not understand. She wanted to get away from it. She felt that she should not be forced to think of death. It did not belong to her. If people only loved her and allowed her to be herself she gave everything.
She turned away from the window and walked back to the mirror.
Alice was the last to reach home for dinner. She closed the front door briskly after her. Its thud was muffled and at the same time emphasized by the quiet of the empty street behind it. She whistled as she took off her hat. The tramp of her feet toward the dining-room was like a man's.
"Hello, Mamma Farley. Hello, Laurie! Glad to see you down, Winnie." She tweaked Bobby's ear.
"Hello, Aunt Alice!" His voice was thick. Like a small amused Buddha, he looked at her.
May thought Aunt Alice was not going to notice her, but Aunt Alice patted the little girl's head. May was terrified and relieved when the big hand brushed her hair heavily. She smiled at Aunt Alice, but Aunt Alice did not see her. Then her face grew stupid with perplexity again and her eyes were like two dark bright empty things; and under her frilled apron, though she tried to hold her chest in tight, you could see her heart beat.