PART V
Laurence felt cleaner and happier in his attitude toward Winnie than he had ever been able to feel when she was alive. He did not go to the cemetery very often, but he saw to it that there were flowers planted in the plot, and that the place was well cared for.
He was cold and still inside himself. His soul had been turned to iron. And he weighed carefully in the scales of justice what had been done by her and what by him. He refused to pity her or himself.
But this could not last. His justice began to live and to ache with the pain of its own decisions. Then he threw it all away. It was only when he allowed himself to despise Winnie thoroughly that he could love her. He would not be killed with remorse.
His children were his greatest pain. He was so close to Bobby that his pride in the child was only a hurt. Laurence was harsh with the child, and before strangers did nothing but find fault.
One day Bobby dropped his toy engine out of the living-room window, and when it fell in the street a bad boy ran off with it. Bobby came crying to his father, but Laurence would give no sympathy.
"If May cried like that nobody would be surprised," Laurence said. "Why didn't you go out and make the boy give it back?"
"He wouldn't div it back! He wanted it!" Bobby bored his scrubby fists into his streaming eyes. His sobs were futile and rebellious.
"Go out and take it away from him. Next time you let some little ragamuffin in the street run off with your toys, don't come to me about it. May would probably let anybody, that wanted to, run off with the dearest thing that she possessed, but that's no excuse for you."
Bobby was so angry that for a moment he forgot to cry. He did not understand his father's cross words, but they were not what he wanted and he hated them.