How much loveliness in how little space! "Star-led," the exquisite phrase! ... "Star-led" ... Now to the "Hymn! ..."
But a law of gravitation greater than he might understand brought his eyes from his book, bent backward his head, lifted his eyes into the eyes of his father staring down from above upon his book.
Then Philip realized blindingly the significance of this moment:
... The son of heaven's eternal King,
Of wedded Maid and Virgin Mother born....
and once more,
... The heaven-born Child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies....
Into the inmost centre of the very heart of his father's faith, the faith of those innumerable dead who for the many centuries had looked upon this day as the climax of their childhood in Jehovah, upon this Yom Kippur whose mere utterance was a fear and a great light, into the synagogue's self, at the very doors of the Holy Ark where lay the Law pregnant with history, he had introduced ... the "wedded Maid," the "heaven-born Child" ...!
Down from his father's eyes it seemed that two actual shafts of flame descended into his own eyes, burning like an acid through the pupils beyond the sockets, into the grey stuff of his brain. A sweat stood upon Philip's forehead, and a chill then seemed to hold it there, like a circle of ice. The fire in his father's eyes shrivelled; there came a hollow shadow of unutterable pain; a sigh fell weakly from his lips. He staggered towards the door for air.
He returned and said, "My son, throw it away, throw thyself away! Let me not see thee again!"
Philip hid the book among the dilapidated Prayer Books at a corner of the women's section and returned to his machzer. Not once did his father's eye meet his own during the rest of the day. When Reb Monash and his wife were proceeding homewards after the fast and Philip made a movement as to accompany them, Reb Monash stared with cold eyes and motioned him to stand away.