Mrs. Farley's tear-inflamed eyes squinted at the light. She huddled against the wall. Her gray hair, undone, clung to her bare neck above her open nightdress. Her eyes, lifted to Alice, were opaque with misery. Below her nightdress her feet were bare. Her toes with bulbous joints rested flaccid on the scrap of brown carpet at the head of the stair. She turned away from Alice and began to fumble blindly for the rail. "Where are you going?" Mrs. Farley slid herself feebly along the rail and down the first step. "I don't know! I don't know!" she wailed. "Stop acting like that, Mamma. You know you can stand up." "I can't! I can't! I don't care what becomes of me!" Alice caught her mother in a grasp of repugnance and pulled her back. "You've got to brace up. You don't care what I think of you or what you do to me, but you have to have a little pride and a sense of responsibility toward Bobby and May. You can't let them see a thing like this. Is Laurence home yet?" "No, he's not home. Why should I feel responsible for Bobby and May? You think I'm not fit for them. You want to take them away from me." "I'm not going to pamper you by arguing with you. If I seriously thought that you wanted to end your life I should consider that interference was none of my business, but----" "And yet you expect me to live! None of your business! Oh, my God!" "But as you have no real intention of killing yourself you have no right to subject me to a scene like this. I want a little peace." "A little peace! Oh, my God, a little peace!" Mrs. Farley shut her eyes and let her head fall backward and forward limply as though there were no vertebræ in her neck. Alice shook her. "Stop it, Mamma." Mrs. Farley rocked herself like a drunken woman. Finally, her eyes yet closed, she shuddered and was still. "Are you calm now?" "Yes. I'm calm. Whatever I do makes no difference to you. Nothing I do affects you. You're hard as nails." "We won't talk about that. You can affect me, but because that is just what you want to do I'm not going to let you." "I want to do! She says I want to do!" "I have to talk you into a state of common sense." Still Mrs. Farley's head nodded as if with sleep and her eyes remained shut. "Common sense. Yes, common sense," she repeated like a dream. "Echoing me in that stupid way won't keep me from going on." "Stupid? She calls it a stupid way. My God! My God! What agony!" Mrs. Farley almost shrieked out "agony." Her knotted hands clutched her flat breasts as if with hunger. Her voice was dully intense. Her wrinkled lids twitched. Why does she twitch her face? Alice's lips curled almost like a snarl. "You'll find me giving away and raving too if you don't watch out, Mamma. I can't stand too much of this."