way
mother would have, if she had lived."

A sigh escaped him, at that, as though a load had lifted from him. He
went on, presently. "It would have been all right if I could have earned
just a little more money." Fanny shrank at that, and shut her eyes for
a sick moment. "But I couldn't. I asked her to be patient. But you don't
know the life there. There is no real home life. They live in the cafes.
They go there to keep warm, in the winter, and to meet their friends,
and gossip, and drink that eternal coffee, and every coffee house--there
are thousands--is a rendezvous. We had two rooms, comfortable ones, for
Vienna, and I tried to explain to her that if I could work hard, and
get into concert, and keep at the composing, we'd be rich some day, and
famous, and happy, and she'd have clothes, and jewels. But she was too
stupid, or too bored. Olga is the kind of woman who only believes what
she sees. Things got worse all the time. She had a temper. So have
I--or I used to have. But when hers was aroused it was--horrible. Words
that--that--unspeakable words. And one day she taunted me with being a
----with my race. The first time she called me that I felt that I must
kill her. That was my mistake. I should have killed her. And I didn't."

"Teddy boy! Don't, brother! You're tired. You're excited and worn out."

"No, I'm not. Just let me talk. I know what I'm saying. There's
something clean about killing." He brooded a moment over that thought.
Then he went on, doggedly, not raising his voice. His hands were clasped
loosely. "You don't know about the intolerance and the anti-Semitism
in Prussia, I suppose. All through Germany, for that matter. In Bavaria
it's bitter. That's one reason why Olga loathed Munich so. The queer
part of it is that all that opposition seemed to fan something in me;
something that had been smoldering for a long time." His voice had lost
its dull tone now. It had in it a new timbre. And as he talked he began
to interlard his English with bits of German, the language to which his
tongue had accustomed itself in the past ten years. His sentences, too,
took on a German construction, from time to time. He was plainly excited
now. "My playing began to improve. There would be a ghastly scene with
Olga--sickening--degrading. Then I would go to my work, and I would
play, but magnificently! I tell you, it would be playing. I know. To
fool myself I know better. One morning, after a dreadful quarrel I got
the i