I was the only one who lay so as to be able to see him, and I had gone to bed so early that he could not suppose I was awake.

The light annoyed him, he wanted to put it out, but he would not risk having it known.
I heard my father find his bed in the dark before I dared to draw a full breath.

The thing he had done was a monstrous sin.

If his mother had seen him do it, it would have broken her heart--his mother who fasted half the days of the year, when he was a boy, to save his teacher's fee; his mother who walked almost barefoot in the cruel snow to carry him on her shoulders to school when she had no shoes for him; his mother who made it her pious pride to raise up a learned son, that most precious offering in the eyes of the great God, from the hand of a poor struggling woman.

If my mother had seen it, it would have grieved her no less--my mother who was given to him, with her youth and good name and her dowry, in exchange for his learning and piety; my mother who was taken from her play to bear him children and feed them and keep them, while he sat on the benches of the scholars and repaid her labors with the fame of his learning.