His tongue seemed the fork of a snake, his words came with such deadly coldness.... "It will end to-night." "How ... to-night?" "I'm leaving.... I'm going west...." "West.... Where?" "To Sam's...." "Oh," said his mother.... There was a long cruel silence. He shut his eyes, overcome with a sort of horror.... Then she turned her face a little away, and he heard the faintly breathed words.... "This is the end of me...." Still he said nothing. She turned toward him, with a groan. "Have you nothing to say?" Again he spoke with deadly coldness.... "Nothing...." She waited a moment: then she spoke.... "You have no feelings. When you set out to do a thing, you will trample over every one. I have never been able to do anything with you. You may become a great man, Paul: but I pity any one who loves you, any one who gets in your path. You will kill whatever holds you--always.... I was a fool to give birth to you: a great fool to count on you.... Well, it's over.... You have your way...." He was amazed: he trembling there, guilty, afraid, horrified, his whole soul beseeching the comfort of her arms! He a cold trampler? He stood, with all the feeling of one who is falsely condemned, and yet with all the guilt of one who has sinned.... And then, suddenly, a wild animal cry came from his mother's throat.... "Oh," she cried, "how terrible it is to have children!" His heart echoed her cry.... The executioner's knife seemed to strike his throat.... He stood a long while in the silence.... Then his mother turned in the bed, sideways, and covered her face with the counterpane.... His sister rose up stiffly, whispering: "She's going to sleep." He stood, dead.... He turned like a wound-up mechanism, went to the door, picked up his valise, and fumbled his way through the house.... The outer door he shut very softly.... He must take the Lexington Avenue car. Yes; that was the quickest way. He faced west. The great wind of autumn came with a glorious gusto, doubtless with flying seeds and flying leaves, chanting the song of the generations, and of them that die and of them that are born. FOOTNOTE: [12] Copyright, 1920, by The Dial Publishing Company. Copyright, 1921, by James Oppenheim. THE DUMMY-CHUCKER[13] #By# ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE From _The Cosmopolitan_ There were many women on East Fourteenth Street. With the seeing eye of the artist, the dummy-chucker looked them over and rejected them. Kindly-seeming, generously fat, the cheap movie houses disgorged them. A dozen alien tongues smote the air, and every one of them hinted of far lands of poverty, of journeys made and hardships undergone. No better field for beggary in all Manhattan's bounteous acreage.