"Yes, father. I want to be better."

Even now he could admire his father's strength, the bull-neck, the dark
close-cropped hair, but he was cold, and the blood had come where he bit
his lip--because he must not cry.

"You must learn obedience. Take off your nightshirt."

He took it off, and was a very small naked figure in the starlight, but his
head was up now and he faced his father.

"Bend over the bed."

He bent over the bed, and the air from the window cut his naked back. He
buried his head in the counterpane and fastened his teeth in it so that he
should not cry out....

During the first three cuts he did not stir, then an intolerable pain
seemed to move through his body--it was as though a knife were cutting his
body in half. But it was more than that--there was terror with him now in
the room; he heard that little singing noise that came through his father's
lips--he knew that his father was smiling.

At the succeeding strokes his flesh quivered and shrank together and then
opened again--the pain was intolerable; his teeth met through the coverlet
and grated on one another; but before his eyes was the picture of Stephen
slowly straightening himself before his enemy and then that swinging
blow--he would not cry. He seemed to be sharing his punishment with
Stephen, and they were marching, hand in hand, down a road lined with