"Why do you do it, then? My God, you could have stopped ten years ago." Seeing her mother's eyes fill with tears, Alice's own dry eyes felt a sudden coolness. "Whom do you do it for? Laurence and I are old enough to look out for ourselves!"
Mrs. Farley's shoulders drooped and shivered. She wagged her head on her lean neck in helpless protest and reproach. Her body rocked. "I suppose your father don't need me," she said scornfully, crudely wiping the sweat from her face with her hand. She looked like a blind woman, hearing Alice from a long way off.
"Of course he doesn't need you! You ought to have found that out the time he tried to get a divorce from you!" Alice, mysteriously urged to cruelty, bore down upon her mother. Alice's eyes glittered inscrutably.
Mrs. Farley could not bear them. She stood at last, tottering a little. Her breath came quickly and raspingly. "Hush, I tell you! Hush! You've brought this up before. There's something cruel in you makes you want to go over and over things that are done with!"
"I suppose you think I'm an interfering old maid?"
"I don't know what you are."
"And you don't want to know." Alice sounded amused. It was an unpleasant sound.
Mrs. Farley, gazing very deliberately at the carpet, blew her nose. "I've never discussed my relation to your father with his children and I'm not going to now. I've sacrificed myself for what I thought best and it's nobody's business but my own."
"Sacrificed!" echoed Alice contemptuously.
"I won't listen to you and that's all there is to it. I never expected gratitude so I'm not disappointed." Mrs. Farley, not looking back, dragged into the hall.