"They do not understand children," Katherine's voice trembled, "your father means well, but Donnie would learn to be a hypocrite through fear of him, or it would break the child's heart. When Donnie is older, he would understand better."
"Go ahead!" Glendon's lip lifted one side of his mouth and gave him the appearance of a dog snarling. His bloodshot eyes glared at his wife. "I say the boy shall go. That settles it!"
"You shall not take him from me," Katherine spoke passionately as she rose and faced her husband, who had also risen. "He is mine! For his sake I have endured the isolation of this place, the curses and abuse you have heaped upon me, the degradation that I saw facing you. I have not been blind to the class of men you associate with now, but I struggled to keep you from sinking lower, just because you were the father of my boy. The last eight years of my life have been continual mental starvation and moral crucifixion. Donnie has given me the strength to bear it, now he will give me the strength to keep you from robbing me of him!"
"You may as well stop your hysterical ranting," Glendon shouted furiously. "The law gives the boy to me, and I say he shall go to father next week."
"The law gives the child to the father," her voice quivered with indignation, "No matter what that father may be; while the mother, who goes down to death to give the child life, has no right! Oh, it is infamous! Why, even the wild animals recognize a mother's rights. Men who frame such a law and enforce it are worse than brutes!"
Glendon seized her arm roughly and glared into her white, defiant face, his own was livid with rage. "Nothing on God's earth can prevent Donnie from going."
"He shall not go!" her voice became suddenly quiet and determined, and her eyes met Glendon's without flinching. "You owe him to me in return for the things of which you have robbed us both. He has never had a father, never dared to laugh like other children do, because he was afraid of you. I will not never give him up to you or any one else. He is mine!"
Glendon thrust her away from him with such violence that she staggered. "I have the law back of me and I'll do what I say, if I have to walk over your dead body to do it!"
He flung himself into the house, knocking over a chair as he passed it; then a bottle clinked against a glass.
The leaves of the magazine at the woman's feet, fluttered in the breeze while she stared with despairing eyes at the grim mountains that walled her like a prison.