And then the past rose up to strike. It struck with claws and teeth, and
the claws and teeth sank into Hugh's flesh, into the flesh of the man whose
seed was already alive within her.
At that moment the woman who had been a thinker stopped thinking. Within
her arose the mother, fierce, indomitable, strong with the strength of the
roots of a tree. To her then and forever after Hugh was no hero, remaking
the world, but a perplexed boy hurt by life. He never again escaped out of
boyhood in her consciousness of him. With the strength of a tigress she
tore the crazed harness maker away from Hugh, and with something of the
surface brutality of another Ed Hall, threw him to the floor of the car.
When Ed and the policeman, assisted by several bystanders, came running
forward, she waited almost indifferently while they forced the screaming
and kicking man through the crowd and in at the door of the police station.
For Clara the thing for which she had hungered had, she thought, happened.
In quick, sharp tones she ordered her father to drive the car to a doctor's
house and later stood by while the torn and lacerated flesh of Hugh's
cheek and neck was bandaged. The thing for which Joe Wainsworth stood and
that she had thought was so precious to herself no longer existed in her
consciousness, and if later she was for some weeks nervous and half ill, it
was not because of any thought given to the fate of the old harness maker.
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