Anger trembled in Mrs. Binswanger's vocal cords like current running over a wire. But Mr. Binswanger sprang suddenly to his feet and crashed the white knuckles of his clenched fist down on the table with a force that broke the flesh. The red lights of anger lay mirrored in the pool of his eyes like danger lanterns on a dark bridge are reflected in black water. "Wolfs--wolfs, all of you! You--you--to-night you got me where I am at an end! To-night you got to _know_--I--I can't keep it in no more--you got--to _know_ to-night--to-night!" His voice caught in a tight knot of strangulation; he was dithering and palsied. "To-night--you--you got to know!" A sudden trembling took Mrs. Binswanger. "For God's sakes, know what, Julius--know what?" "I'm done for! I'm gone under! Till it happened you wouldn't believe me. Two years I seen it coming, two years I been fightin' and fightin'--fightin' it by myself! And now for yourselves you look in the papers two weeks from to-morrow, the first of March, and see--I'm done for--I'm gone under, I--" "Julius--my God, you--you ain't, Julius, you ain't!" His voice rose like a gale. "I'm gone under--I ain't got twenty cents on the dollar. I'm gone, Becky. Beat up! To-morrow two weeks the creditors, they're on me! My last extension expires, and they're on me. I been fightin' and fightin'. Twenty cents on the dollar I can't meet, Becky--I can't, Becky, I can't! I been fightin' and fightin', but I can't, Becky--I--can't! I'm gone!" "Pa." "Julius, Julius, for God's sakes, you--you don't mean it, Julius--you--don't--mean it--you're fooling us--Julius!" Small, cold tears welled to the corners of his eyes. "I'm gone, Becky--and now he--he wants the shirt off my back--he can have it, God knows. But--but--_ach_, Becky--I--I wish I could have saved _you_--but that a man twice so strong as his father--_ach, Gott_, what--what's the use? I'm gone, Becky, gone!" Mr. Isadore Binswanger swung to his feet and regarded his parent with the dazed eyes of a sleepwalker awakening on a perilous ledge. "Aw, pa, for--for God's sake, why didn't you tell a fellow? I--we--aw, pa, I--I can knuckle down if I got to. Gee whiz! how was a fellow to know? You--you been cuttin' up about everything since--since we was kids; aw, pa--please--gimme a chance, pa, I can knuckle down--pa--pa!" He approached the racked form of his father as if he would throw himself a stepping-stone at his feet, and then because his voice stuck in his throat and ached until the tears sprang to his eyes he turned suddenly and went out of the room, slamming the door behind him. The echo hung for a moment. Miss Binswanger lay whitely in her chair, weakened as if the blood had flowed out of her heart. From the granitoid square at the base of the air-shaft came the rattle of after-dinner dishes and the babble of dialect. Mr. Binswanger wept the tears of physical weakness.