“I suppose I should have tried to burn the place down while he was still in it!” Hubert shouted. “It was you gave me a fright, clumping in here with your Mother of Mercy face and banging the coal down on the floor so that I dropped the paper. It was you did it, with your spite and your bad temper.”

She sat forward in her chair and spoke, but Hubert could not catch her words through the storm of hatred that blinded, deafened, and choked her, and that shook her so that when she leaned forward to fling her accusations more heavily toward him, she tumbled out of her chair and onto her hands and knees on the floor. She dragged herself back up into the chair as though she were dragging herself up onto a rock out of the sea, and then she sent Hubert a look of terrified appeal that vanished at once under a witless, imploring, craven smile.

Hubert saw the smile and knew that she was silenced. “Well, now you’ve made a proper fool of yourself!” he cried, “falling and flopping all over the room and crying over a few spots on the linoleum. Come on now and cheer up and stop making a show of yourself over nothing.”

“Over nothing is it!” she cried. “If John was here, he’d tell you. John would stand up for me. John knew how hard I worked. Working and slaving to keep the place nice and you call it nothing. But what do you care! You never cared about me and you never cared about him and you ended up driving him out of the house.” She stopped because Hubert had leaned back in his chair and was smiling at her.

“I’m going to tell you something, Rose,” said Hubert. “You won’t like it, but I think it’s time you learned. Do you know who really drove John out of the house?”

Mrs. Derdon said nothing.

“Answer me,” said Hubert.

“I thought you did,” Mrs. Derdon said.