Somehow I kept my voice steady. I interrupted; and, following my plan, veered him back into his maniacal misogyny.
"You have a poor opinion of our sex indeed. What, Sir, if you have a daughter of your own?"
"I busy myself not with my children of the flesh, but only with my children of the spirit."
He was impossibly real, impossibly like Grandmother's story. He meant what he said; there was no hypocrisy. I was proud of the handsome face, had a lunatic longing for the eyes.
I could kiss him, kill him.
"I had a child once, they tell me—at least her mother said it was mine—"
Now! cried Melodrama, Now! cried the Plan, and the Mary I had always visualized for this moment achieved herself as—suddenly, savagely—I cut him across the face with my whip.
He was an old man now, and fell to the ground helplessly. I lashed at him in a blind fury of revenge and righteousness, shouting horrible words of which I hardly knew the meaning. He tried to rise, but I struck him down again. "Bitch, Bitch, you called her Bitch. You swine, God is paying you back."
I knelt down suddenly beside him: "Father, will you kiss me?"