one might imagine discouraged children roaming about in preternatural quiet. Then presently into the silence broke the Awful Voice.
"I-told-you-I-didn't-even-want-to-hear-you, not one of you!"
It was a terrible voice, the voice of the outraged Superman who has witnessed the weaklings disobey his dread command.
Again the Voice; this time not raised in commanding anger, but offended and dignified.
"Don't be foolish," said the Voice. "Of course you can move. But"—here it rose grave and menacing like a slowly rising tempest—"if I hear any noise!"
Again the Silence. Again the Voice, this time blaring out the menace of a trumpeting elephant.
"Be still!"
Silence of the grave. Into this silence came Sara's little piping treble. Alice's strained ears could not hear what it said, but she could infer by the trumpeting answer:
"Because I say so!"
Alice's first thought was, brave little Sara, to dare to face the formidable creature who was doubtless glommering at her. Then into Alice's mind shot a thought unendurable, a maddening thought, and that thought was, "He likes to do this. He's enjoying his authority."
Alice had long been a suffragist; it was at this moment she became a feminist. Those potent words, "a Man-Made World," she had passed over almost with flippancy. Now she realized what women and children had had to bear all these years; now she realized what at rock bottom was the character of her husband, Tom Marcey. Brutal authoritarianism, enjoyment of just sheer force—was what it was!
