The air remained tense in the household for several days, but nothing further happened until one night when the father arrived a little later than usual from his work, looking just as he did the night of the quarrel.  Again his speech was a little thick, and the mother’s face assumed an ominous look.  She said nothing about what was nearest her heart, however, she started instead to complain of some petty disobedience on the part of Keith.

“If you spanked him a little more and humoured him la little less, he would obey more readily,” said the father.

His words carried no particular menace, and there seemed no reason why the boy should be scared.  But perhaps there was something else in the atmosphere that affected his sensitive nerves and sent him unexpectedly into a paroxysm of weeping.

“Stop it,” cried his father dark with sudden anger.  “Stop it, I tell you.”

“You leave the boy alone,” cried the mother, her face as white as the father’s was red.

“We’ll see whether he’ll obey or not!”

As he spoke, the father sat down on the nearest chair, picked up the boy and put him face down across his knees.

Keith’s heart seemed to stop.  He even ceased weeping.  Then he heard his mother cry out: 

“If you touch the boy, I’ll throw myself out of the window!”

“Oh, hell!” came back from the father.  With that he half dropped and half flung the boy to the floor, so that the latter rolled across the room and landed under the chaiselongue.

There Keith lay, still as a mouse, until he was pulled out by his mother.  He didn’t begin to cry again, and he was no longer scared or upset.  A few moments later he was undressing and going to bed as if nothing had happened.

Another week had hardly passed, when Keith was waked up again at night, but this time by a noise as if the house was falling.  As he sat up in bed, staring wildly about him, his nostrils became filled with a smell that was quite new to him.  It was like smoke, but more pungent.

The living-room was dark, but the door to the parlour stood open, and light came through it.  Not a sound could be heard for a few moments.

Then his mother came running into the room and flung herself on her knees beside the chaiselongue.

“Oh, my boy, my boy, my boy!” she cried over and over again as she pressed Keith to her breast, rocking him back and forth.

A few seconds later the father also came in carrying the lamp in one hand.  Having put it on the dining table, he dropped down on a chair as if too exhausted to stand up.

His face showed a pallor quite strange to it and for the first and only time in his life Keith thought that his father looked scared.

“Don’t, Anna,” the father said after a while, sitting up straight on the chair.  “It’s all right now—­”

Then a thought or a memory seemed to recur to him, and he said in a voice that nearly broke: