He rose from his bed. It felt as if he were tearing his body into strips. Every bone ached, every muscle was raw. He opened his door and crept down the stairs till he stood outside his father's bedroom. He knocked. His father had at last fallen asleep. The monologue for that night was ended at last. There was no reply. He knocked again. A sudden and tremendous panic seized him. What a fool he was! What was he doing it all for? Why shouldn't he settle down and be what his father wanted him to be and what the masters at school wanted him to be. It was the easier way. How easy it would be to gain the applause of the Polish Synagogue, the applause of Doomington School! On the other side, what? Poetry, Shelley! A swift agony of pain as he moved recalled him to his determination. Forward, forward! He knocked a third time, more loudly.
"Yah, yah!" came the startled, sleepy voice of Reb Monash. "Who is it? What is it?"
Philip opened the door.
"It's me!"
"What hast thou come about?"
"I've come about Sewelson. I said I won't go out again with Sewelson..." There was a pause. The boy heard his heart drumming across the night. Then followed—"Well—I will!"
He heard a gasp from the bed.
"Gott!"
Silence, complete silence.
Philip closed the door and crept upstairs again. The pain of his lacerated flesh was somehow easier to bear. A faint finger of moonlight pointed ghostlily into the room as he entered. He made out vaguely the milk and cake his mother had sent up for him. He discovered he was ravenously hungry and devoured the food. He took his clothes off and with great caution hunched himself between the blankets. The moonlight washed over his face and showed him sound asleep.