"No, he'll never do any better," she sighed. "If anything, he'll do worse--if he can do any worse. I look for him to strike me next!"
"He'd better not try that when I'm around!" said Joe hotly.
"What would you do to him, Joe?" she asked, her voice lowered almost to a whisper. She leaned eagerly toward him as she spoke, a flush on her face.
"Well, I'd stop him, I guess," said Joe deliberately, as if he had considered his words. As he spoke he reached down for his hat, which he always placed on the floor beside his chair when he took his meals.
"If there was a soul in this world that cared for me--if I had anywhere to go, I'd leave him this hour!" declared Ollie, her face burning with the hate of her oppressor.
Joe got up from his chair and left the table; she rose with him and came around the side. He stopped on his way to the door, looking at her with awkward bashfulness as she stood there flushed and brilliant in her tossed state, scarcely a yard between them.
"But there's nobody in the world that cares for me," she complained sorrowfully.
Joe was lifting his hat to his head. Midway he stayed his hand, his face blank with surprise.
"Why, you've got your mother, haven't you?" he asked.
"Mother!" she repeated scornfully. "She'd drive me back to him; she was crazy for me to marry him, for she thinks I'll get all his property and money when he dies."
"Well, he may die before long," consoled Joe.
"Die!" said she; and again, "Die! He'll never die!"
She leaned toward him suddenly, bringing her face within a few inches of his. Her hot breath struck him on the cheek; it moved the clustered hair at his temple and played warm in the doorway of his ear.
"He'll never die," she repeated in low, quick voice, which fell to a whisper in the end, "unless somebody he's tramped on and ground down and cursed and driven puts him out of the way!"
Joe stood looking at her with big eyes, dead to that feminine shock which would have tingled a mature man to the marrow, insensible to the strong effort she was making to wake him and draw him to her. He drew back from her, a little frightened, a good deal ashamed, troubled, and mystified.
"Why, you don't suppose anybody would do that?" said he.
Ollie turned from him, the fire sinking down in her face.