"I--I'm gone, Becky. What you want for Poil I can't do. I'm gone under. We got to start over again. It was the interurban done it, Becky. I needed new capital to meet the new competition. I--I could have stood up under it then, Becky, but--but--" "_Ach_, my husband--for myself I don't care. _Ach_, my husband." "I--I'm gone, Becky--gone." He rose to his feet and shambled feebly to his bedroom, his fingers feeling of the furniture for support, and his breath coming in the long wheezes of dry tears. And in the cradle of her mother's arms Miss Binswanger wept the hot tears of black despair; they seeped through the showy lace yoke and scalded her mother's heart. "Oh, my baby! _Ach_, my husband! A good man like him, a good man like him!" "Don't cry, mamma, don't--cry." "Nothing he ever refused me, and now when we should be able to do for our children and--" "Don't cry, mamma, don't cry." "If--if he had the money--for a boy like Max--he'd give it, Poil. Such a good husband--such--_ach_, I go me in to papa now--poor papa. I've been bad, Poil; we must make it up to him; we--" "'Sh-h-h!" "We got to start over again, Poil--to the bone I'll work my fingers, I--" "'Shh-h-h, mamma,'sh-h-h--somebody's knocking." They raised their tear-ravaged faces in the attitude of listening, their eyes salt-bitten and glazed. "It's--it's Izzy, baby. See how sorry he gets right away. He ain't a bad boy, Poil, only always I've spoilt him. Come in, my boy--come in, and go in to your papa." The door swung open and fanned backward the stale air in a sharp gust, and the women sprang apart mechanically as automatons, the sagging, open-mouthed vacuity of surprise on Mrs. Binswanger's face, the tears still wet on her daughter's cheeks and lying lightly on her lashes like dew. "Mr. Teitlebaum." "Max!" Mr. Teitlebaum hesitated at the threshold, the flavor of his amorous spirit tasty on his lips and curving them into a smile. "That's my name! Hello, Pearlie girlie! How-dye-do, Mrs. Binswanger--what what--" He regarded them with dark, quiet eyes, the quick red of embarrassment running high in his face and under his tight-fitting cap of close-nap black hair. "Ah, excuse me; I might have known. I--I'm too early. Like my mother says, I was in such a hurry to--to get back here again I--I nearly got out and pushed the Subway--I--you must excuse me. I--" "No, no; sit down, Mr. Teitlebaum. Pearlie ain't feelin' so well this evening; she's all right now, though. Such a cold she's got, ain't you, Poil?" "Yes--yes. Such a cold I got. Sit--sit down, Max." He regarded her with the rims of his eyes stretched wide in anxiety. "Down at supper so well you looked, Pearlie; I says to my mother, like a flower you looked." A fog of tears rose sheer before her. "Her papa, Mr. Teitlebaum, he ain't so well, neither. Just now he went to bed, and he--he said to you I should give his excuses." "So! Ain't that too bad, now!" "Sit down, Max, there, next to mamma."