e all the time, and they had been laughing at me, the two of
them. I didn't find it out until just before this American trip. And
when I confronted her with it she laughed in my face. She said she hated
me. She said she'd rather starve than leave him to come to America with
me. She said I was a fiddling fool. She--" he was trembling and sick
with the shame of it--"God! I can't tell you the things she said.
She wanted to keep Mizzi. Isn't that strange? She loves the baby. She
neglects her, and spoils her, and once I saw her beat her, in a rage.
But she says she loves my Mizzi, and I believe she does, in her own
dreadful way. I promised her, and lied to her, and then I ran away with
Mizzi and her nurse."

"Oh, I thank God for that!" Fanny cried. "I thank God for that! And now,
Teddy boy, we'll forget all about those miserable years. We'll forget
all about her, and the life she led you. You're going to have your
chance here. You're going to be repaid for every minute of suffering
you've endured. I'll make it up to you. And when you see them applauding
you, calling for you, adoring you, all those hideous years will fade
from your mind, and you'll be Theodore Brandeis, the successful,
Theodore Brandeis, the gifted, Theodore Brandeis, the great! You need
never think of her again. You'll never see her again. That beast! That
woman!"

And at that Theodore's face became distorted and dreadful with pain. He
raised two impotent, shaking arms high above his head. "That's just it!
That's just it! You don't know what love is. You don't know what hate
is. You don't know how I hate myself. Loathe myself. She's all that's
miserable, all that's unspeakable, all that's vile. And if she called
me to-day I'd come. That's it." He covered his shamed face with his two
hands, so that the words came from him slobberingly, sickeningly. "I
hate her! I hate her! And I want her. I want her. I want her!"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

If Fanny Brandeis, the deliberately selfish, the calculatingly
ambitious, was aghast at the trick fate had played her, she kept her
thoughts to herself. Knowing her, I think she must have been grimly
amused at finding herself saddled with a helpless baby, a bewildered
peasant woman, and an artist brother both helpless and bewildered.

It was out of the question to house them in her small apartment. She
found a furnished apartment near her own, and installed them there, with
a working housekeeper in charge. She had a gif