Exasperated by taunts, exhausted by the arduous figuring, Paul had gone hot, then cold—cold with vindictiveness. He had had enough of standing at the blackboard and furnishing amusement for those who were safe in their seats. With ominous deliberation he picked up the chalk and put a solid white point after every digit in the long answer. Let them take their choice! He replaced the chalk and walked to his seat. The class was too dumbfounded to laugh.
As Paul sat down, the teacher sharply called his name:
"Minas, stand up." Paul stood up. "Did I ask you to leave the blackboard?"
Paul felt thirty pairs of eyes on him. "You asked me to experiment with the decimal," he replied in a steely voice.
"But not to make a fool of yourself."
Paul winced. "And I didn't ask to be sent to the board to be made a fool of, either."
"You will report to the head master at three o'clock."
That interview was still pending, and Paul, sick at heart, weighed during the endless French lesson the pros and cons of reporting to the head master. The world was becoming hideously impersonal; his raw smarts were being reduced to a neuralgic ache. Nothing now seemed to matter. All he knew was that he would never knuckle under—never, never, never!
"J'ai, tu as, il a," chanted the class, "nous avons, vous avez, ils ont."
The savage beside him was chanting it with the rest, but Paul was dumb. The teacher's eyes had been watching him.
"Some members of the class," he said, "are not repeating the words after me. Now once again."
Still Paul declined to move his lips, and the savage, from the tail of his eye, gave him a wondering glance.
At the end of this repetition there was a portentous silence.
