But despite the squalor of the flat and the heavy air of the dark bedroom, Yetta woke up with a new and firmer grip on life. She had found some one who needed her. The first of the next month she moved her aunt to a flat nearer _The Clarion_ office. There were four rooms and a bath. The parlor she rented to Moore and Levine. It was a great improvement for them, and Mrs. Goldstein's cooking was less expensive and more nourishing than the restaurant fare on which they had been subsisting. Yetta shared the bedroom with her aunt. The metamorphosis in the old woman was startling. Yetta remembered her as a very unlovely person, hardened and bitter. It had been a reflection of her environment. Now in clean and decent surroundings, in the midst of those who treated her with respect, under the sunshine of her niece's affection, she changed completely. Yetta was continually surprised to find how much her aunt reminded her of her father. The struggle in the office was as intense as ever, but now Yetta had a home. Her wounds were healing rapidly. Some months after her new establishment had been founded, Yetta came into _The Clarion_ office and found confusion. Every one talked at once, and it took some minutes to get a connected story. Isadore had caved in. For several days he had been rather surly--excusing himself on the ground of a headache. That morning about nine o'clock he had tumbled out of his chair, unconscious. Dr. Liebovitz--the Comrade whom Yetta had heard speak at her first labor-meeting--had been called in. He had pronounced it typhoid fever. "We had him taken up to our room," Harry Moore said; "Levine and I will take his. It's no place for a sick man. And besides, when the nurse goes, your aunt can take care of him."' A sort of helplessness had fallen on the little group, now that their leader was stricken. But Levine in this crisis changed his character--or let his true character shine through his crust of pessimism. He pushed every one back into their places and set the wheels going again. When the forms were locked up and the next day's assignment made, the office force was loath to separate. It is regrettable that the virtues of our friends are like our kidneys--we never notice them till something goes wrong. For the first time they were realizing what a tower of strength Isadore had been. As the days had passed they had more often been impressed by his occasional bursts of nervous irascibility, his unaccountable stubbornnesses. He had walked about among them, with his bent shoulder, his wrinkled, lumpy face, as far removed from Mary Ames' sentimentality, or Harry Moore's flippant optimism, as from Levine's ingrowing surliness. His most salient characteristic seemed to have been that he was "always there." Now he was gone. "He's so modest and simple," Harry said, "that we never noticed how strong he was." "I wish there was something I could do for him," Nell sniffled.