compass, Miss Coblenz crouched now upon the floor,
head down somewhere in her knees, and her curving back racked with rising
sobs.

"Selene--but some day--"

"Some day nothing! A woman like gramaw can't do much more than go down-town
once a year, and then you talk about taking her to Russia! You can't get in
there, I--tell you--no way you try to fix it after--the way gramaw--had--to
leave. Even before the war Ray Letsky's father couldn't get back on
business. There's nothing for her there, even after she gets there. In
thirty years, do you think you can find those graves? Do you know the size
of Siberia? No! But I got to pay--I got to pay for gramaw's nonsense. But I
won't. I won't go to Lester if I can't go right. I--."

"Baby, don't cry so--for God's sake, don't cry so!"

"I wish I was dead!"

"'Sh-h-h! You'll wake gramaw."

"I do!"

"O God, help me to do the right thing!"

"If gramaw could understand, she'd be the first one to tell you the right
thing. Anybody would."

"No! No! That little bank-book and its entries are her life--her life."

"She don't need to know, mama. I'm not asking that. That's the way they
always do with old people to keep them satisfied. Just humor 'em. Ain't I
the one with life before me--ain't I, mama?"

"O God, show me the way!"

"If there was a chance, you think I'd be spoiling things for gramaw? But
there ain't, mama--not one."

"I keep hoping if not before, then after the war. With the help of Mark
Haas--"

"With the book in her drawer, like always, and the entries changed once in
a while, she'll never know the difference. I swear to God she'll never know
the difference, mama!"

"Poor gramaw!"

"Mama, promise me--your little Selene. Promise me?"

"Selene, Selene, can we keep it from her?"

"I swear we can, mama."

"Poor, poor gramaw!"

"Mama? Mama darling?"

"O God, show me the way!"

"Ain't it me that's got life before me? My whole life?"

"Yes--Selene."

"Then, mama, please--you will--you will--darling?"

"Yes, Selene."

In a large, all-frescoed, seventy-five-dollar-an-evening-with-lights and
cloak-room-service ballroom of the Hotel Walsingham, a family hostelry in
that family circle of St. Louis known as its West End, the city holds not
a few of its charity-whists and benefit musicales; on a dais which can be
carried in for the purpose, morning readings of "Little Moments from
Little Plays," and with the introduction of a throne-chair, the monthly
l