"He laughed
at me! So utterly cold and cruel. Then as he came back to himself he
seized me by the wrists, and swore that no child of his would be born
to a scheming slut---his very words---the likes of me. And he beat me,
as if trying to snuff out the lives of both of us. I honestly believe
he would have done it, if fear of losing his position had not
intervened.
"Then he dragged me by the hair, down the long hallway, and threw me
out into the cold Winter night, with only the torn nightdress wrapped
about my battered limbs. The last words he said as I ran from the
house in tears, were that if anyone ever learned the child was his, he
would kill us both. And he meant it."
Mary was crying now for both of them, feeling as if she, too, had been
beaten and raped. "How could he?" was all she could manage.
"How?" asked the old woman, half mocking, half in earnest. "For a man
like that it was as easy as breathing.
`The shark will strike
and the spider spin,
The mad dog kill, and kill again
Until he is killed in his turn.'
Remember that, Mary.
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