"I'm sure of it."
Mrs. Price's grip on Winnie's arms relaxed. Winnie lay still, moaning.
Mrs. Price got up. Her eyes looked wasted with fear. She stared helplessly at her daughter.
"Oh, Winnie, what shall I do for you?"
Winnie's nostrils, very wide open, quivered like those of a mare crazy with a painful bit. "I won't! I'll die first!" she said. "I won't!"
Laurence was around her, in her, formless like smoke. Her animosity to him was living its separate life within her.
She sobbed herself into numbness. She would not feel it. She wanted the life in her to lie cold and numb. Her breasts swelled. She thought she could feel the milk flowing through them like shame through her flesh.
Mrs. Price walked up and down the room, clasping and unclasping her hands. "Yes, I'll send for Dr. Beach. We must send for Dr. Beach. I cannot understand your husband, Winnie."
Bewildered by the catastrophe as she was, it gave her a certain feeling of assurance to be able unreservedly to condemn Laurence again.
She gazed at Winnie prone on the bed and felt suddenly sickened with futility. All of Mrs. Price sickened and armed against Laurence. She wanted to snatch the child from the taint of its father as from a disease.