‘He will undo us all’, blurted out the tall man.
‘I shall not give him away ... no, never!’ ejaculated the distracted mother.
‘O God’, whispered the merchant, and covered his face with his hands. His hair was unkempt after a sleepless night. The tall man stared at the infant with fixed, protruding eyes....
‘I don’t know you’, the woman uttered, low and crossly, on catching that fixed look. ‘Who are you? What do you want of me?’
She rushed to the other men, but everybody drew back from her with fear. The infant was crying on, piercing the brain with its shouting.
‘Give it to me’, said the merchant, his right eyebrow trembling. ‘Children like me.’
All of a sudden it grew dark in the cellar; somebody had approached the little window and was listening. At this shadow, breaking in so suddenly, they all grew quiet. They felt that it was coming, it was near, and that not another second must be lost.
The mother turned round. She stood up on her toes, and with high, uplifted arms she handed over her child to the merchant. It seemed to her that by this gesture she was committing a terrible crime ... that hissing voices were cursing her, rejecting her from heaven for ever and ever....
Strange to say, finding itself in the thick, clumsy, but loving hands of the merchant, the child grew silent.
But the mother interpreted this silence differently. In sight of everybody the woman grew grey in a single moment, as if they had poured some acid over her hair. And as soon as the child’s cry died away, there resounded another cry, more awful, more shattering and heart-rending.