“But, Kahn, you must think, you must give me an answer. All this indecision is all very well for us, for all of us who are too old to change, for all of us who can reach God through some plaything we have used as a symbol, but there’s my son, what is he to think, to feel, he has no jester’s stick to shake, nor stool to stand on. Am I responsible for him? Why,” she cried frantically, “must I be responsible for him? I tell you I won’t be, I can’t. I won’t take it upon myself. But I have, I have. Is there something that can make me immune to my own blood? Tell me—I must wipe the slate—the fingers are driving me mad—can’t he stand alone now? Oh, Kahn, Kahn!” she cried, kissing his hands. “See, I kiss your hands, I am doing so much. You must be the prophet—you can’t do less for the sign I give you—I must know, I must receive an answer, I will receive it.”
He shook her off suddenly, a look of fear came into his eyes.
“Are you trying to frighten me?” he whispered. She went into the hall, into the dark, and did not know why, or understand anything. Her mind was on fire, and it was consuming things that were strange and merciful and precious.
Finally she went into her son’s room and stood before his bed. He lay with one feverish cheek against a dirty hand, his knees drawn up; his mouth had a peculiar look of surprise about it.
She bent down, called to him, not knowing what she was doing. “Wrong, wrong,” she whispered, and she shook him by the shoulders. “Listen, Oscar, get up. Listen to me!”
He awoke and cried out as one of her tears, forgotten, cold, struck against his cheek. An ague shook his limbs. She brought her face close to his.
“Son, hate too, that is inevitable—irrevocable——”
He put out his two hands and pushed them against her breast and in a subdued voice said, “Go away, go away,” and he looked as if he were about to cry, but he did not cry.
She turned and fled into the hall.
However, in the morning, at breakfast, there was nothing unusual about her, but a tired softness and yielding of spirit; and at dinner, which was always late, she felt only a weary indifference when she saw Straussmann coming up the walk. He had a red and white handkerchief about his throat, and she thought, “How comic he looks.”