Alice cut her beefsteak with brisk emphatic strokes. She took big bites and chewed them with an air of exaggerated relish. She felt herself to be the one person in the world who understood Laurence, but she knew that he feared and resented her understanding. He had always been saturnine and had lived his life alone. At college he paid his own way until he won a medal which entitled him to a scholarship. After this he devoted himself to research work in biology. Alice's imagination had never quite encompassed his impulse in marrying Winnie and it was still more difficult to understand why Winnie had committed herself. Even in the days of courtship Winnie had often fled in tears from her lover. She was ashamed of his deliberated vulgarities, though they piqued and invited her. Alice could not comprehend it. Winnie and Laurence had been secretly married. When the Prices commanded their daughter to leave her husband, Laurence had withdrawn from the decision and told her to do as she liked. She had not been able to make herself leave him. She did not know that she wanted to. Her parents had cut her off. Ten months later May was born. Laurence took his scientific knowledge to the laboratory of a manufacturer of serums and began to make a living.
"I used up most of your five dollars on some hens today, Alice." Mrs. Farley's conscience was heavy with the sudden silence at the table. It merged into her own inner silence and became the voice of herself from which she was anxious to escape.
"Good."
"You work so hard, Mamma Farley. Don't!" Winnie, not wanting Mamma Farley to work, felt sad and nice again and justified before Laurence.
"I'm used to it." Mrs. Farley's mouth puckered in a prim tired smile. The mouth was satisfied with itself, so it drew up like that.
"Don't deprive Mamma of the joy of martyrdom, Winnie," Alice insisted, laughing shortly. Mrs. Farley kept her withered lips smiling, but her eyes, dull and confused with resentment, felt covertly and bitterly for her daughter's face. Alice ate, oblivious. Mrs. Farley, with physical irritation, felt Alice eating beefsteak and swallowing it half chewed.
"You leave Mother alone, Alice. Expend your benevolent energies somewhere else." Laurence, his lip twitching with repression, stared hard and smiling into Alice's eyes. Her eyes were a sad brown, a little dull. They were quiet eyes staring back unreproachfully as though they understood the pain of his. Laurence had a constant unreasoning impulse to defy Alice.
"Thanks," Alice answered with tired sarcasm.
"I don't need any one to look after me, Laurence," Mrs. Farley said, her voice cheerful, her mouth wry and tight, her lids drooped.
Mr. Farley was restless. "Your mother is right. We must give Mr. and Mrs. Price a royal welcome tomorrow. We must put ourselves in their place. There are two sides to everything and it takes a great deal of determination to make the first overture. They've done that. Now it's up to us." Mr. Farley was always afraid that the incipient quarrel between Alice and her mother would develop plainer proportions. He did not see the group about him clearly, but a helpless smile was on his face. In terror of their unkindliness he showed them how noble he was.