Mrs. Thropp then lost a great opportunity forever. She tore the
girl's hands away and handed her over to her father. And he, with
ugly fury and ugly gesture, seized the young woman who had been
his child and dragged her to him and sank into a chair and wrenched
and twisted her arms till he held her prone across his knees. Then
he spanked her with the flat of his hand.
Kedzie made one little outcry; then there was no sound but the thump
of the blows. Adna sickened soon of his task, and Kedzie's silence
and non-resistance robbed him of excuse. He growled:
"I guess that'll learn you who's boss round here."
He thrust her from his knees, and she rolled off to the floor and
lay still. She had not really swooned, but her soul had felt the
need of withdrawing into itself to ponder this awful sacrilege.
CHAPTER VIII
Her mother knew that she had not fainted. She was sick, too, and
blamed Kedzie for the scene. She spurned the girl with her foot
and said:
"You get right up off that floor this minute. Do you hear?"
Kedzie's soul came back. It had made its decision. It gathered
her body together and lifted it up to its knees and then erect,
while the lips said, "All right, momma."
She groped her way into the bathroom and washed her face, and
straightened her hair and came forth, a dazed and pallid thing.
She took up the valise her father gave her and followed her mother
out, pausing to pass her eyes about the beautiful room and the
window where the peaks of splendor were.
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