May's sobs lessened. Without knowing what had occurred, she felt utterly subjugated. She wanted to love her mother, but the soft, angrily caressing eyes would not let her. When would her mother let her stop crying? There were no tears any more. It was hard to cry without tears.
"Poor naughty Mamma doesn't know what she's done!"
May, with her eyes shut, stole out a hand which trembled on her mother's face.
"You do love me then? May, you must! You mustn't love Papa best!"
"I don't!"
They kissed. May saw that her mother's eyes were like things standing in their own shadows and loving themselves. They liked being sad. They yearned over May's face, but it was as if they did not see it and were yearning for themselves.
"Go play with Bobby then, dear, and don't hurt poor Mamma like that."
"I won't."
May ran out and left Winnie looking into the glass beyond where the child had been. Winnie could not understand how she could be blamed for anything. She was so innocent, so childlike. At one time Laurence had been able to discover no faults in her. She recalled the early months of their marriage and remembered that in those days whenever she had reason to think him displeased with her she made funny little pictures of herself with her hands over her eyes and, signing them "poor Winnie," left them under his plate at table where he found them at the next meal. A pang of hatred shot through her, mingled with the recollection of caresses, involuntary on his part. She felt a need for justifying her increasing hardness of heart and when she regarded herself sadly in the mirror she was reassured. It was as if in the way her tousled reddish curls shot back the light there was something that contradicted blame.
It was four o'clock. Through the window the sunshine on the row of houses opposite paled their red bricks to the purplish tint of old rose petals. At the end of the street where the square began bunches of raw green foliage floated with a heavy stillness above the smutty roofs steeped in light. Behind the bright yellow-green leaves the blue sky melted into itself as into its own dream.