“How do I know whom you’ve been rowdying with? But I am not going to argue with you. You are to obey orders. That’s all. Sit down and finish the letter.” She was very pale and was summoning all her strength to keep on her feet.
In Edgar, a last tiny flame of credulity went out. To tread on the truth and extinguish it as one would a burning match was more than he could stomach. His insides congealed in an icy lump, and everything he now said was in a tone of unrestrained, pointed maliciousness.
“So I dreamed what I saw in the hall, did I? I dreamed this bump on my forehead, and that you two went walking in the moonlight and he wanted to make you go down the dark path into the valley? I dreamed all that, did I? What do you think, that I am going to let myself be locked up like a baby? No, I am not so stupid as you think. I know what I know.”
He stared into her face impudently. To see her child’s face close to her own distorted by hate broke her down completely. Her passion flooded over in a tidal wave.
“Sit down and write that letter, or——”
“Or what?” he sneered.
“Or I’ll give you a whipping like a little child.”
Edgar drew close to her and merely laughed sardonically.
With that her hand was out and had struck his face. Edgar gave a little outcry, and, like a drowning man, with a dull rushing in his ears and flickerings in his eyes, he struck out blindly with both fists. He felt he encountered something soft, a face, heard a cry....
The cry brought him to his senses. Suddenly he saw himself and his monstrous act—he had struck his own mother.