Mr. Farley, ashamed for Alice, played with his fork.
Mrs. Farley said, "Alice always had a terrible temper and got her feelings hurt needlessly, but I never imagined she would develop the crazy morbidness she has shown lately."
Mr. Farley could not bear the talk about pain any longer. He got up. "I think I'd send Alice her dinner," he said to no one in particular. He added, "I have some letters to write so I won't wait until the rest of you are finished."
When Mr. Farley was out of hearing, Mrs. Farley said, pursing her lips, "You know there was insanity in your father's family, Laurence."
"Yes. You told me once. Aunt Celia." Then Laurence frowned at his mother and nodded toward May. He hated his mother's attitude toward Alice, but, because he loathed it, he always defended it. What his instinct warned him against, he always refused to give up. When his mother, hoop-shouldered, weakly resistant, looked at him with her unyielding, self-enwrapped eyes, it was because of the very shudder which it gave him, that he hardened himself to take it. He was kind to her as an apology for his contempt.
Mrs. Farley turned to May. "Fold up your napkin."
May rolled the soft cloth in her little trembling hand. She had hoped when she spoke that her father and grandmother would somehow relieve her of Aunt Alice whom she carried inside her so oppressively, but now she knew they would not.
"Go upstairs and begin to undress yourself," Mrs. Farley said.
"Yes'm." May slid to her tiptoes. Her belly ached with a kind of sickish hunger. She went out into the hall to the foot of the stair, and laid her pale hand on the cold, slick rail which caught dim reflections from the bright open door of the dining-room. She would have to go up alone, past Aunt Alice's door. The dark did not want her because she had told. It was white and blind against her eyes.
Quivering in every limb she tiptoed up the steps.