Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it: He suddenly raises the bayonet, and holds it in front of my face. He looks straight into my eyes, no longer smiling or nodding. 'Swear again,' he says. I place my hand on the flat of the blade as I did before. And as I did before, I feel in my skin the electric sharpness that surrounds it. 'I swear,' I say. 'That I didn't break the solemn oath I swore never to reveal our secret things.' I drop my eyes as I repeat the words. But I didn't break the oath! I didn't reveal our things! 'So help me God,' I repeat after him, still not looking at him. 'Or cut my throat and hope to die.' I manage to raise my eyes at last, and find that he's taking something out of the trunk and holding it up for me to see. It's the flattened Players cigarette packet. His eyes are still fixed on me. My face is burning with the heat of my shame. 'It wasn't ... I didn't ...' I stammer. 'She must have found the key.' Suddenly his face is just in front of mine, though, smiling again, and I can feel the point of the bayonet against my throat. ‘You swore,' he whispers. 'You double-swore.' I can't speak. Something, either terror or the pressure of the blade on my windpipe, seems to be constricting my voice. I try to move my head back a little. The bayonet follows the movement, and presses harder. 'You said, "So help me God,” he whispers. 'You said "Cut my throat and hope to die."' I can't speak. I can't move. All I can do is to remain frozen with fear as the pressure of the blade against my windpipe gradually increases. He's not actually going to cut my throat, I understand that. He's going to go on until he breaks the skin, though, and lets the germs on the blade into my bloodstream. I can't take my eyes off that smile six inches in front of my face. It comes slowly closer and closer, as Barbara Berrill's face did when she kissed me. His eyes look into mine. They're the eyes of a stranger. The blade presses slowly harder. And now suddenly I'm not sure after all that it is ever going to stop. 'And then you showed her,' he whispers. I know my eyes are filling with tears of pain and humiliation, and I can feel another little source of wetness around the point of the bayonet, as the blood wells out and mingles with the germs. And now I'm beginning to think it's true, that I did show her our secret things, though I suddenly wonder if it's really Barbara Berrill he means or if it isn't perhaps his mother. I have the odd idea that in some strange way we're talking about both of them – that the crime he's punishing in me is not mine at all, but one that's being committed inside his own house. And even in the extremity of my terror I suddenly realise where he learnt to practise this particular form of torture with this particular instrument, and why his mother, in the heat of summer, has taken to wearing that cravat pinned high around her neck. Slowly, slowly the pressure on my throat increases. All I have to do is take out the scarf and give it him, as I gave his father the basket I can't do it, though. I can't let Keith's eye fall upon those rawly private words, sent on silk by that living ghost in the Barns to Keith's own mother. Chemnitz Leipzig Zwickau They can't be revealed! For Keith's own sake as much as for hers. I can't show him what spying actually means the fear, the tears, the silken, whispered words. [from Chapter 10] How does Frayn make this such a disturbing moment in the novel?