I felt horrible as I crept in my socks into my mother’s room and took my box from her writing table; but it was not so horrible as the previous day’s experience. My heart beat so fast I nearly died, and it was no better when I found, at the first look, down below on the stairs, that the box was locked. It was easy to break it open, it was only necessary to cut through a thin plate of tin; but the action caused me pain, for only in doing this was I committing theft. Up to then I had only taken lumps of sugar and fruit on the sly. Now I had stolen something, although it was my own money. I realized I had taken a step nearer Kromer and his world, that I was slipping gradually downwards⁠—and I adopted an attitude of defiance. The devil could run away with me if he liked, there was no way out. I anxiously counted the money, it had sounded so much in the box, now in my hand it was miserably little. There were sixty-five pfennigs. I hid the box in the basement, held the money in my closed fist and went out of the house, with a feeling different from any with which I had ever left the portal before. Someone called to me from above, I thought, but I went quickly on my way.