n't count: I hardly remember most of it, anyhow. Before
me, as I talked, the faces swam away into a dim and meaningless strip. I
was not talking to these raw, swankering college boys. I was talking to
something beyond--to something that was infinitely brighter and more
glorious than I had ever known before. I was talking to something beyond
all earth--to Someone....

And I was appealing, was summoning, calling Him down to my aid. I was
speaking His words, in the spirit of His ancient fighting prophets. I
was fighting His fight. The calm frenzy in my heart was of His
instillation. For years I had sought Him. For years I had shunned Him,
knowing my need of Him. For all the days of my life I had borne the
fierce justice of His words as a lonely burden--and now, now....

"And I shall fight and fight," I cried, "in the name of God--the God
that is over all of us, of whatever race, creed or color--for the things
that are fair and right and just. I shall have justice for a little East
Side Jewish freshman as you shall have it, too."

Then suddenly, as if blinded by the refulgence of what I saw, my eyes
began to water and grow dim. I stood there, tense, and did not mind the
pain that was in them. But I could speak no more.

And slowly the men rose and went out, quietly, strangely--looking back
sometimes to where I stood--not comprehending everything, I suppose, but
moved beyond all common approbation. They had been conquered.

Braley remained alone with me in the deserted hall. I looked at him
across a row of seats and began to laugh.

"You didn't even say a word to them about that rotten trick we played on
you," he said, shamefacedly, his glib manners gone.

"I didn't have to," I replied. "Besides, I forgot."

"Well--er--thanks! You could have had us expelled!"

But the pain and dizziness were beyond standing now. I tore off my hat,
so that he had a glimpse of the long, sullen cut over my eye.

"Look out!" he cried, leaping up on the platform, to hold me--for I was
falling to the floor.

I remember laughing again, long but weakly. "I didn't have to! I didn't
have to!"

And after so much light, there came the darkness.

XX

THE CANDLES ARE LIGHTED

When I rose from a hospital bed of fever and darkness, ten days later,
it was with a feeling of rebirth--as if, in the dripping delirium of
threatened blindness, the last doubts had sloughed away.

And when the bandage was taken from my eyes, and I had, for