After this admonishment the minister requested the first five on the
first form to stay behind. He wished to speak to them in private. The
first five looked as if they had been sentenced to death. Their chests
contracted; they breathed with difficulty, and a careful observer might
have noticed that their hair had risen an inch at the roots and lay over
their skulls in damp strands like the hair of a corpse. Their eyes stared
from their blanched sockets like two round glass bullets set in leather,
motionless, not knowing whether to face the question with a bold front,
or hide behind an impudent lie.

After the prayer the hymn of Christ's wounds was sung; to-night it
sounded like the singing of consumptives; every now and then it died
away altogether, or was interrupted by a dry cough, like the cough of
a man who is dying of thirst. Then they began to file out. One of the
five attempted to steal away, but the minister called him back.

It was a terrible moment. Theodore who sat on the first form was one
of the five. He felt sick at heart. Not because he was guilty of the
offence indicated, but because in his heart he considered it an insult
to a man thus to have to lay bare the most secret places of his soul.

The other four sat down, as far from each other as they could. The
belt-maker's apprentice, who was one of them, tried to make a joke,
but the words refused to come. They saw themselves confronted by the
police-court, the prison, the hospital and, in the background, the
asylum. They did not know what was going to happen, but they felt
instinctively that a species of scourging awaited them. Their only
comfort in their distressing situation was the fact that _he_, Mr.
Theodore, was one of them. It was not clear to them why that fact