I looked at the clock. It was a quarter past ten. In an hour and three-quarters the sabbath would be upon us. There was not much time. I glanced at my father anxiously. “How far have you got?” I asked. “About half-way,” he said. Then he rose to his feet again and crossed to the harmonium. “Ring for the cocoa,” he said. I sprang to the bell. But just as I reached it my mother entered, bearing two cups of the sustaining fluid. Signalling to her to withdraw, he lifted one of the cups and drained its contents at a single gulp. “Now, listen,” he said, and in a low but rising voice, he began a denunciation that I shall never forget. Impeccable in logic, succinct in argument, perfect in phrasing and faultlessly delivered, I have never, I think, listened to so moving an utterance as the initial moiety of my father’s denunciation. Beginning, as I have said, in a low voice, yet one that was crystal clear in its penetrating capacity, for the first five minutes or so my father refused to allow himself the adventitious aid of a single gesture. It was the gathering of the storm, as it were, the marshalling of the hosts of heaven, composed but relentless, above the brazen image. Then he paused for a moment, indicating the aspidistra that stood upon a tripod in the corner of the room. “Now, say that’s the bird,” he said, and suddenly like a flash of lightning, his right index finger was quivering upon the air. Involuntarily I leapt round and stared at the aspidistra, and then like the deafening downburst of a tornado, my father expanded his chest, threw back his head, and opened the full floodgates of his passion. Pallid and cowering, I crept behind the armchair, while syllable after syllable rent the night, and the delirious harmonium leapt and crashed down again beneath the palpitant thunder of his blows. Then almost as suddenly he stopped. “That’s as far as I’ve got,” he said. I crept from my shelter. “Is there to be much more?” I asked. “About five minutes’ calm,” he said, “and then the final, culminating climax.” He wiped his forehead. “I’ve got it roughed out,” he said, “if you’d like to hear it before it’s rounded off.”