"Too busy to talk," he said. "Anyhow I'm no wizard. I can't prophesy. He's pretty sick. But he'll have to get a lot sicker before we let go. Really, I can't stop now. I've got a confinement, a T. B. test, and an operation before four." Yetta went out into the kitchen and set her aunt to work getting supper for the nurse. Then, feeling suddenly very tired, she went to her room. But she could not sleep. The wonder of a doctor's life had caught her imagination. It dizzied her to try to realize what it must mean to rush, as Liebovitz was doing, from a desperate struggle with death to a childbirth. Again and again the vision came back to her of Isadore's shrunken, pallid face. When the doctor came down after his lecture, Yetta asked if she could be of any help in the sick-room. "No," he replied shortly. "You'd only use up good air." She had never felt so useless before in her life. The next few days passed--in dread. Most of the time she spent at the office. She had taken on Isadore's editorial work. There was some comfort in that. His other tasks had been divided between Locke and Moore and Levine. A big strike broke out in the Allied Building Trades; it meant extra work--but also increased circulation. After the day's grind, Yetta came back to the hushed home where the great battle was being fought out and where she was perforce a non-combatant. There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask the doctor, but he was generally too busy to talk. One night after Isadore had been sick more than a week Liebovitz came down from a lecture in a genial mood. "I hope your aunt has cooked a big supper," he said. "Nothing to eat at home. The good wife is house cleaning." "Well. How's it going?" Yetta asked, as he came out of the sick-room and sat down to a plate of steaming noodle-soup. "We've done our part. It's up to him now. We've pulled him through the regular crisis. If he don't take it into his head to relapse and if he really wants to get well, I guess he will." He answered her questions in monosyllables until he had stowed away the last of Mrs. Goldstein's cooking. Then, lighting a cigarette and putting three lumps of sugar in his coffee, he began joking with the old woman in Yiddish. But Yetta kept interrupting him with more questions.