"Yes, I guess she is, from the look of her, not that I put anything past you. But that's your business. You're nothing to me. I'm cured of you. You couldn't make me suffer the way they do in books. I've kept my name, so if it's divorce you have on your brain, you might as well get it out, because—"
"No, Albert—"
"I've kept my name, whatever you've done to yours. Your life is your business. But the girl. That's where I have a right or two coming to me."
She was prepared for just this, but somehow when it came it was a full moment before she could answer, for the rush of fear that choked her.
"That's for—for Zoe to decide."
"That's for me to decide. She goes to a decent, respectable home where she belongs. You're not fit to raise her. Look at what you made of her. A fine specimen. A short-haired freak with all your crazy ideas thriving in her head. You've ruined your life, but you didn't succeed in ruining mine and you won't ruin hers. You and your stage-struck notions that never got you anywhere. She's going home where she belongs!"
She could hardly breathe for keeping down the rising tide of her terror, but her eyes were always cold for him.
"Your daughter has a lyric-soprano voice, and however little that may mean to you she is going to delight the world with it some day. One of the great masters of the world has made her his protégée. She is preparing for her audition—her hearing—in the fall, and it is even possible she may be singing in grand opera next season. You cannot—"
"I'll see her dead first. You were an opera bird, too. I'll see her dead first before I let her make a zero mark out of her life as her crazy mother did before her."
"Albert, can't you see! Zoe's the wine. You, mamma—papa—the vine. I don't count. I—I'm sort of the grape—that fermented—you see! She's me—plus. Her arm is long enough to touch what she wants. Mine wasn't. I saw it, but I couldn't reach. I was one generation too underdone. You cannot have Zoe. I cannot. She doesn't belong to you or me. She belongs to life. She's not mine. She is only my success; she—"