The teeth of Philip's bitterness fastened close on this harangue. This was the first moment since his return from Wenton that he had become conscious of Reb Monash as a separate and complete entity. He had been irrelevant hitherto. Only his mother, living or dead, had occupied the full circle of his vision. There had been room for no one, nothing but her. The incident on the return from the cemetery had made a hole in the walls of his isolation, an acid had come trickling into him, corroding him. What did the old man mean by this futility? What interest was all this to the nodding old fools on the sofa? Indeed, what interest were her virtues to the man himself, eulogizing her from the low stool, in the same chant he had heard often in the bygone years, rising fitfully from the room where the living woman lay sleepless and frightened in her bed? "And what think you she would do? She would borrow money on her bracelets to lend to Yashka, the fisher's wife! And when a woman gave birth she would forget she was ill herself: she'd go out through the rain to make her some dainty and clean her floor! What a house she kept for me....!" It was intolerable! Would he never finish? Whither was he leading? Faster and faster revolved the wheels behind his eyes. He dug his nails into his hands and the voice proceeded evenly. He had stopped. No, it was to draw breath! He was proceeding again. This man his father? Oh, a stranger surely! They had lost sympathy enough, God knows, these years. But the man incanting now so monotonously, who was he, what was he doing here? Philip found his own lips in motion. Reb Monash was silent and turned his head towards his son. "You've found it all out now, have you?" he said. The voice was raw and dry, a voice he had never uttered nor heard before. Was it himself had asked that question, and himself who asked again with words that stabbed the tranced silence in which the room lay frozen-- "So you've found it out now that you've killed her?" A blight seemed to fall on the lips of Reb Monash. They turned sick and grey. The colour spread along his cheeks. His eyes grew wider and dark and very sorrowful. Neither he nor his son seemed aware that Dorah had advanced to the boy, her teeth showing large between her lips, that she lifted her hand to strike him, but the hand had failed suddenly, and she had sunk on a stool, sobbing. The eyes of Reb Monash still rested full on his son's, but his chin drooped lower on his breast. When he spoke, his voice echoed the raw dry tones that had left Philip's mouth. "God knows, Feivele!" he said. "Perhaps thou hast right!" His head shook unsteadily for some moments, then fell forward and downward like a lead weight. "He's fainted!" shrieked Dorah. "He's fainted!" Channah echoed. Dorah turned fiercely on Philip. Her fingers clawed the air. "What have I done?" Philip said. "What was I saying?"