"Like what?" Alice's voice was sharp—almost threatening—with distrust.
Winnie kept her eyes shut and wrung her hands. "I thought you knew all about it, Alice."
"About what?"
"Don't act as though you couldn't forgive me! That woman out West—and—and your father started to get a divorce and gave it up. I'm so afraid Laurence won't love me any more!"
Alice knew that her parents had had some trouble. It was the year she was away at school. She had heard fragments—allusions. Now she felt strange. She wanted to hear more but could not—not from Winnie's lips. Alice's coarsely fine face burnt bronze with shame. Her sad eyes of thick brown searched Winnie's evasive features distrustfully. "You mustn't talk about this, Winnie," Alice said. "In the first place it has nothing to do with Laurence. You know as well as I do that Laurence cares for nobody but you and never will. I don't believe he feels hard toward you because you want to see your mother."
"Now you're angry with me?"
"I'm not. I'm going upstairs to wash and brush. You cut out this morbid nonsense, Winnie." Alice smiled a hard, kind, dismissing smile, and turned away, walking briskly out with her firm, awkward stride.
May edged out of the shadow and came nearer her mother. It was half dark in the room. Winnie sniffed, oblivious to May. May came and stood very near. She reached over and passed a hesitant hand along the arm of her mother's chair.
Winnie started. May drew back and stood teetering on one foot, her face alternately dark and smiling. "Oh, May, I t-told you to go out."
May hung her head. A sort of shiver like the shimmer of water passed over her pale, uneasy face. She wanted to go toward her mother. Wanted almost unendurably to go. But something in her mother held her off. May was in torment between the two impulses which possessed her equally.