It was the boy’s utter calm and perfect poise in a crucial situation, more than the girl question now, which was making Johnathan a man obsessed. He wanted Nathan to cringe and be afraid. Nathan was driven back against the wall but he did not cringe. Neither was he afraid. For the son had at last looked into his father’s weak, inflamed eyes and realized that he—the son—was the better man. Johnathan’s lips moved ghastly before his voice would come. “So I’m crazy, am I? And if I choose to murder you, what would you do?” “I won’t hit you, father. But no one could criticize me for defending myself when any one, even my own father, announces he’s going to murder me.” “You’ll defend yourself? How?” “That remains to be seen.” “God Almighty——” “It strikes me, father—and this is as good a time to say it as any—it strikes me that there’s altogether too much dragging of God into our family affairs, and mouthing His name over and over is little short of blasphemy. Let’s leave God out of this and settle it between ourselves.” On the son’s face was slight contempt. Johnathan moved deadly close. Forked lights were dancing in his eyes. “I demand respect and obedience,” began Johnathan in a cracked, unnatural voice. “Respect isn’t something that one person can demand of another, father. It’s something we earn by the way we conduct ourselves, day by day——” Nathan never finished his sentence. Johnathan aimed a blow for his son’s jaw which, landed, would have split open the lad’s face. But this time Nathan saw the blow coming. And—— The step from terrible tragedy to divine comedy is oft but the space of a hair. Johnathan struck for his son’s jaw. But when his fist reached his son’s jaw, his son’s jaw wasn’t there. It had moved. With a boxer’s nicety of perception for distance, Nathan had whipped his head to the left. The father’s fist went through plaster and lath halfway in to the elbow. Anna Forge heard the dull smash and Johnathan’s bellow of agony. She burst into the kitchen. She beheld her husband for an instant with his hand and arm caught in a ragged aperture in the plaster. Off to one side Nathan stood with a tired, amused smile around his mouth. But there was no amusement in the incident for Johnathan. He had broken two small bones in his right hand. And all further attempts at parental chastisement were adjourned for that night in the greater calamity of broken bones. “You go to bed!” he ordered his son hoarsely. “We’ll finish this in the morning.” The father’s face had been ashen with anger. Now it was white with agony, and his eyes were streaming tears. Nathan pitied his father. But he shrugged his shoulders and went from the room. The pain from the broken knuckles was so great that Johnathan soon sobbed openly. Still, one could hardly expect the boy to leave his face around to intercept any such blow as Johnathan had purposed. V