s altered, irrevocable.

'Does Mrs. Mandle still live here?' he asked with a horrible
heart-sinking.

'Yes, first floor,' said Gideon, staring.

Ah, how his heart leapt up again! Haigitcha, his dear Haigitcha! He
went up the ever-open dusty staircase jostling against a spruce,
handsome young fellow who was hurrying down. He looked back with a
sudden conviction that it was his son. His heart swelled with pride
and affection; but ere he could cry 'Yankely' the young fellow was
gone. He heard the whirr of machines. Yes, she had kept on the
workshop, the wonderful creature, though crippled by his loss and the
want of capital. Doubtless S. Cohn's kind-hearted firm had helped her
to tide over the crisis. Ah, what a blackguard he had been! And she
had brought up the children unaided. Dear Haigitcha! What madness had
driven him from her side? But he would make amends--yes, he would make
amends. He would slip again into his own niche, take up the old
burdens and the old delights--perhaps even be again treasurer of 'The
Gates of Mercy.'

He knocked at the door. Haigitcha herself opened it.

He wanted to cry her name, but the word stuck in his throat. For this
was not his Haigitcha; this was a new creature, cold, stern, tragic,
prematurely aged, framed in the sombre shadows of the staircase. And
in her eyes was neither rapture nor remembrance.

'What is it?' she asked.

'I am Elkan; don't you know me?'

She stared with a little gasp, and a heaving of the flat breasts. Then
she said icily: 'And what do you want?'

'I am come back,' he muttered hoarsely in Yiddish.

'And where is Gittel?' she answered in the same idiom.

The needles of the whirring machines seemed piercing through his
brain. So London knew that Gittel had been the companion of his
flight! He hung his head.

'I was only with her one year,' he whispered.

'Then go back to thy dung-heap!' She shut the door.

He thrust his foot in desperately ere it banged to. 'Haigitcha!' he
shrieked. 'Let me come in. Forgive me, forgive me!'

It was a tug-of-war. He forced open the door; he had a vision of
surprised 'hands' stopping their machines, of a beautiful, startled
girl holding the ends of a half-laid tablecloth--his Rachel, oh, his
Rachel!

'Open the window, one of you!' panted Haigitcha, her shoulders still
straining against the door. 'Call a policeman--the man is drunk!'

He staggered back, his pressure relaxed, the door slammed. This
repetition of hi