n or other one flashy, loud-talking Hebrew in a restaurant
can cause more ill feeling than ten thousand of them holding a religious
mass meeting in Union Square."

Theodore pondered a moment. "Then here each one of us is responsible. Is
that it?"

"I suppose so."

"But look here. I've been here ten weeks, and I've met your friends, and
not one of them is a Jew. How's that?"

Fanny flushed a little. "Oh, it just worked out that way."

Theodore looked at her hard. "You mean you worked it out that way?"

"Yes."

"Fan, we're a couple of weaklings, both of us, to have sprung from
a mother like ours. I don't know which is worse; my selfishness,
or yours." Then, at the hurt that showed in her face, he was all
contrition. "Forgive me, Sis. You've been so wonderful to me, and to
Mizzi, and to all of us. I'm a good-for-nothing fiddler, that's all.
You're the strong one."

Fenger had telephoned her on Saturday. He and his wife were at their
place in the country. Fanny was to take the train out there Sunday
morning. She looked forward to it with a certain relief. The weather had
turned unseasonably warm, as Chicago Octobers sometimes do. Up to the
last moment she had tried to shake Theodore's determination to take
Mizzi and Otti with him. But he was stubborn.

"I've got to have her," he said.

Michael Fenger's voice over the telephone had been as vibrant with
suppressed excitement as Michael Fenger's dry, hard tones could be.

"Fanny, it's done--finished," he said. "We had a meeting to-day. This is
my last month with Haynes-Cooper."

"But you can't mean it. Why, you ARE Haynes-Cooper. How can they let you
go?"

"I can't tell you now. We'll go over it all to-morrow. I've new plans.
They've bought me out. D'you see? At a price that--well, I thought I'd
got used to juggling millions at Haynes-Cooper. But this surprised even
me. Will you come? Early? Take the eight-ten."

"That's too early. I'll get the ten."

The mid-October country was a lovely thing. Fanny, with the strain of
Theodore's debut and leave-taking behind her, and the prospect of a
high-tension business talk with Fenger ahead, drank in the beauty of the
wayside woods gratefully.

Fenger met her at the station. She had never seen him so boyish, so
exuberant. He almost pranced.

"Hop in," he said. He had driven down in a runabout. "Brother get off
all right? Gad! He CAN play. And you've made the whole thing possible."
He turned to look at her. "You're