With a cry of hatred, Carl struck his father in the face and watched him reel back against the wall of the dining-room with a feeling of warm triumph. He struck him again and revelled in the blood that decorated the man’s lips. His mother shrieked with fear; his father returned the blows; and the two men fought around the room, overturning chairs and vases. Several neighbors, brought by the cries of his mother, rushed in and overpowered him. Together with his father, they held him down while someone summoned a patrol wagon, and he was taken to a cell in a police station. As he sat in the flatly smelling semi-gloom of the cell he caressed, with an overpowering fondness, the blood that had stiffened upon parts of his face, for it mutely testified that he had conquered the remote lie around him and altered it to a satisfying enemy. He had persuaded himself that he was still alive, and the blows which he had given his father had been the first proof of this illusory emancipation. Throughout the night, as he shifted upon the iron shelf that was his bed, he muttered to himself at regular intervals, “I am alive, I am still alive,” as though he were trying to preserve a triumphant dream that would soon disappear, and the grief within him rocked to and fro upon the words, using them as a cradle. But when the morning dodged shamefacedly into his cell, bringing with it a faint retinue of city sounds, the annoying fantasy returned with full vigor, and the ghost within him stealthily assumed possession of his flesh. Once more he was a thinly wounded spectator, filled with an impotent hatred at the melee about him and longing for the lusty release of physical motion. Two small boys, lying upon their stomachs, peered through the grating of his cell window, which stood on a level with the sidewalk outside, and jibed at him. He cursed them incessantly, with an anger that was not directed at them, but at the meaningless tensions of their voices, and with the tumult of his own voice he vainly strove to shake the wraith within him to firmer outlines.