With her hands stuffed against rising sobs, his mother ceased rocking herself to and fro in her straight chair, her eyes straining through the open door. A thin voice came through, querulous, and then the tap-tap of a cane. Mr. Herman Loeb answered the voice, standing quiet at the bed-end. "Nothing is the matter, grandma." "Come and get me, Herman." "Yes, grandma." He hastened out and re-entered almost immediately, leading Mrs. Simon Schulien, her little figure so fragile that the hand directing the cane quavered of palsy, and the sightless face, so full of years and even some of their sweetness, fallen in slightly, in presage of dust to dust. "Bertha?" "Yes, mamma." "Here, grandma, by the window is your chair." He lowered her to the red-velvet arm-chair, placing her cane gently alongside. "So!" She moved her sightless face from one to the other, interrogating each presence. "Sadie?" "Yes, grandma." "How you holler, children! Everything ain't right?" "Yes, grandma. Ma and Sadie and me been making plans. To-morrow night Sadie goes with me to New York on my trip. A little pleasure trip." The little face, littler with each year, broke into smile. "So, little Sadie-sha, you got good times, not? A good husband and good times? New York! To New York she goes, Bertha?" "Yes, mamma." Mrs. Schulien fell to crooning slightly, redigesting with the senility of years. "To New York! Nowadays young wives got it good. How long you stay, Hermie?" "It's just my Pittsburgh-New York trip, grandma." "Sadie, come here by grandma." She approached with the tears drying on her face, her bosom heaving in suppressed jerks. "Yes, grandma." And patted the little clawlike hand, and the bit of white hair beneath the fluted cap, and a bit of old lace fastened with an old ivory cameo and covering the old throat. "You got good times, not?" "Yes, grandma." "And you'm a good girl, Sadie. Eh? Eh?" "Y-yes, grandma." "When you come back from New York, you bring grandma a fine present, not?" "Yes, yes, grandma." "A quilted under jacket wholesale, for when grandma rides out in the wheel-chair." "Y-yes, grandma." To the saturnine, New York of its spangled nights is like a Scylla of a thousand heads, each head a menace. Glancing from his cab window one such midnight, an inarticulate expression of that fear must have crept over and sickened Mr. Herman Loeb. He reached out and placed his enveloping hand over that of his wife, "Well, Sadie, you take good care of yourself, girl. No matter how we decide to--to end this thing, remember you're my wife--yet." "Yes, Herman," said Mrs. Loeb, through a gulp. "Don't stint, and remember how easily you get cold from draughts." "I won't. I will." "If you find yourself too crowded in that room with your friend, get a better one farther away from the theaters, where it isn't so noisy--maybe by yourself." "I'll see." "You won't be afraid to go back to that room now, with Sylvette still at the show?" "N-no."