"Not for many years," she said, and for the first time her voice shook.
"Ah—h!" His breath went inwards.
Suddenly he began to fumble among the bed clothes.
"The picture," he said incoherently, "your mother's picture. Pick it up," he ordered, his eyelids drooping strangely. "No—no—under the bed."
Before I could stop her she had dropped to her knees and was fumbling among the rolls of dust under the bed. An overpowering dread had clutched at me, forcing the air from my lungs. But in that instant he had raised himself, by what must have been an almost incredible exercise of will, and grabbed her by the throat.
"Curse you!" he cried, shaking her as one would a rat, "you and your mother—cur—"
His hands dropped away, limp and brittle like withered leaves. He fell back.—
Of course they will always find excuses for the dead, and eulogies. Even as I helped her into Jim's small curtained car and took my place at the wheel, I knew that the things that they would say about her would be more than I could bear. We plunged forward, and a moment later, rounding a curve, our headlights came full upon the outlines of the old farm with its hideous false façade. I could not resist glancing at her, though I said nothing. Her eyes were on her hands, held loosely in her lap. She did not look at me until, with another lurch, we had swung about again, and all but the road in front of us was drawn back swiftly into obscurity. I found that she had turned towards me then, and, as I laid one hand across her arm, I felt her relax to a relieved trembling. Before us the night crowded down over the countryside, masking its ugliness like a film, through which our lights cut a white fissure towards town.