my father angry gleams, and her voice ring cruel and hard; though the
moment he was gone her lips would tremble and her eyes grow soft again
and fill with tears; when my father would sit with averted face and
sullen lips tight pressed, or worse, would open them only to pour
forth a rapid flood of savage speech; and fling out of the room,
slamming the door behind him, and I would find him hours afterwards,
sitting alone in the dark, with bowed head between his hands.

Wretched, I would lie awake, hearing through the flimsy walls their
passionate tones, now rising high, now fiercely forced into cold
whispers; and then their words to each other sounded even crueller.

In their estrangement from each other, so new to them, both clung
closer to me, though they would tell me nothing, nor should I have
understood if they had. When my mother was sobbing softly, her arms
clasping me tighter and tighter with each quivering throb, then I
hated my father, who I felt had inflicted this sorrow upon her. Yet
when my father drew me down upon his knee, and I looked into his kind
eyes so full of pain, then I felt angry with my mother, remembering
her bitter tongue.

It seemed to me as though some cruel, unseen thing had crept into the
house to stand ever between them, so that they might never look into
each other's loving eyes but only into the eyes of this evil shadow.
The idea grew upon me until at times I could almost detect its outline
in the air, feel a chillness as it passed me. It trod silently
through the pokey rooms, always alert to thrust its grinning face
before them. Now beside my mother it would whisper in her ear; and
the next moment, stealing across to my father, answer for him with his
voice, but strangely different. I used to think I could hear it