er, come quiet her--for God's sake quiet
her!"

From her place in the sobbing circle, Esther Kantor crossed to kneel
beside her mother.

"Mamma, darling, you're killing yourself! What if every family went on
this way? You want papa to come in and find us all crying? Is this the
way you want Leon to spend his last hour with us--"

"O God--God!"

"I mean his last hour until he comes back, darling. Didn't you just hear
him say, darling, it may be by spring?"

"'Spring'--'spring'--never no more springs for me--"

"Just think, darling, how proud we should be. Our Leon, who could so
easily have been excused, not even to wait for the draft."

"It's not too late yet--please, Leon--"

"Our Roody and Boris both in camp, too, training to serve their country.
Why, mamma, we ought to be crying for happiness! As Leon says, surely
the Kantor family who fled out of Russia to escape massacre should know
how terrible slavery can be. That's why we must help our boys, mamma, in
their fight to make the world free. Right, Leon?"--trying to smile with
her red-rimmed eyes.

"We've got no fight with no one! Not a child of mine was ever raised to
so much as lift a finger against no one. We've got no fight with no
one."

"We have got a fight with some one. With autocracy! Only, this time it
happens to be Hunnish autocracy. You should know it, mamma; oh, you
should know it deeper down in you than any of us, the fight our family
right here has got with autocracy!"

"Leon's right, mamma darling, the way you and papa were beaten out of
your country--"

"There's not a day in your life you don't curse it without knowing it!
Every time we three boys look at your son and our brother Mannie, born
an--an imbecile--because of autocracy, we know what we're fighting for.
We know. You know, too. Look at him over there, even before he was
born, ruined by autocracy! Know what I'm fighting for? Why, this whole
family knows! What's music, what's art, what's life itself in a world
without freedom? Every time, ma, you get to thinking we've got a fight
with no one, all you have to do is look at our poor Mannie. He's the
answer! He's the answer!"

In a foaming sort of silence, Mannie Kantor smiled softly from his chair
beneath the pink-and-gold shade of the piano-lamp. The heterogeneous
sounds of women weeping had ceased. Straight in her chair, her great
shelf of bust heaving, sat Rosa Kantor, suddenly dry of eye; Isadore
Kantor head up. Erect now, a