"
"Yes, I had."
"What's the good of telling lies?"
"It's no good telling the truth," Robert answered stolidly. "They only
get crosser than ever. She hadn't any right to hit me. She's not even
a relation."
"She's your step-mother."
He began to tremble again uncontrollably.
"She's n-not. Not any sort of a mother. My mother's dead."
It was the first time he had ever said it, even to himself. It threw a
chill over him, so that for a moment he stopped thinking of Edith and
his coming black revenge. He had done something that could never be
undone. He had closed and locked a great iron door in his mother's
face. "She's just a beast," he repeated stubbornly. "I'd like to kill
her."
Frances considered him with her head a little on one side. It was like
her not to enter into any argument. One couldn't tell what she was
thinking. And yet one knew that she was feeling things.
"I'd wipe that blood off," she said. "It's trickling on to your
collar. No, not with your hand. Where's your hanky?"
He tried to look contemptuous. He did, in fact, despise handkerchiefs.
The nice little girls in the Terrace had handkerchiefs, ostentatiously
clean. He had seen them, and they filled his soul with loathing. Now
he was ashamed. It seemed that even Frances expected him to have a
handkerchief.
"I haven't got one," he said.
"How do you blow your nose, then?"
"I don't," he explained truculently.
She executed one of her queer little dances, very solemnly and intently
and disconcertingly.
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