"I try never to think of that, Walter," replied Alice, rising to her feet but controlling herself more than she could have believed possible. "I try never to think of the price I have paid for anything I have; if I did, I should go mad and strip these rags from my shoulders."
She stood her ground with flashing eyes. "I, not you," she cried, "have paid for what I have and the clothes I wear. I paid for them--not you--with my youth and health and hopes and happiness. I paid for them with the life of my little girl; with all that a wretched woman can sacrifice to a brute. Paid for them! God help me! How haven't I paid for them?"
She stopped for sheer breath, but before he could find words she spoke again. "Now, I am done with you forever. I am out of your power forever. Thank God, some one will protect me from your brutality for the rest of my life----"
MacBirney clutched the back of a chair. "So you have picked up a lover, have you? This sounds very edifying from my dear, dutiful, religious wife." Hardly able to form the words between his trembling lips, he smiled horribly.
She turned on him like a tigress. "No," she panted, "no! I am no longer your religious wife. It wasn't enough that I should go shabby and hungry to make you rich. Because I still had something left in my miserable life to help me bear your cruelty and meanness you must take that away too. What harm did my religion do you that you should ridicule it and sneer at it and threaten and abuse me for it? You grudged the few hours I took from your household drudgery to get to church. You promised before you married me that our children should be baptized in my faith, and then refused baptism to my dying baby."
Her words rained on him in a torrent. "You robbed me of my religion. You made me live in continual sin. When I pleaded for children, you swore you would have no children. When I told you I was a mother you cursed and villified me."
"Stop!" he screamed, running at her with an oath.
The hatred and suffering of years were compressed into her moment of revolt. They flamed in her cheeks and burned in her eyes as she cried out her choking words. "Stop me if you dare!" she sobbed, watching him clench his fist. "If you raise your hand I will disgrace you publicly, now, to-night!"
He struck her. She disdained even to protect herself and crying loudly for Annie fell backward. Her head caught the edge of the table from which she had risen.
Annie ran from the bedroom at the sound of her mistress's voice. But when she opened the boudoir door, Alice was lying alone and unconscious on the floor.