Hallock suddenly began to cry with rage. "Hysteria, damn you, don't you insult her too!" Then, as an angry sneer appeared on Roger's face, he unexpectedly leaned over the table and punched Roger on the nose.
Roger vaulted over the table and with a rapid clip laid Hallock flat. The boy was on his feet in a moment, crying, but game. The edified audience held the two apart.
"You don't know what the Dutch slob said! You don't know," sobbed Hallock.
Roger did not speak. In fact he could not. He stood white and trembling for some time, a scarlet trickle of blood running from one nostril. His struggle for control was so obvious that even Hallock perceived it and was silent. With the other lads he stood in embarrassment while the laboratory clock ticked and the end of the winter sunset filled the room.
It seemed to Roger that the fight was as difficult now as it had been years before, when he had struck his mother's soothing hand from his shoulder and later had kissed that same hand and had wept his heart out with his cheek upon it. In the brief moment as he stood with clenched fists and bowed head, waiting for the red mist to give way to his normal vision it seemed as if all his life passed in review before him tinged with the hot glare of his mental and spiritual tempests. Then, as many, many times before, he seemed to feel the gentle hand, that he had struck, laid softly on his forehead. He heaved a great sigh and looked up.
"The class is dismissed," he said. "Hallock, hold a snowball to your chin as you go home."
When the class had left the room, Roger washed his face at the sink in the corner, wiping his hands on a towel that was gray with age. Then, he dropped the towel and stood leaning against the table, head bowed, arms folded.
The gloaming increased. A cheerful whistle sounded in the hall and Ernest came in.
"Well, old top? Ready to go home?"
"Ern, do you know a girl named Anderson?"