rbert, a little like a horse, swings away his heavy head.

They are gone in the bell's jangle.

* * * * *

"What a good boy: what a big-hearted boy!" Meyer said aloud. "I like the
boy. He will be strong and a success, you see."

Her words, "I saw him lift the skirt of Flora and peep up," she could
not utter. She was silent, seeing the dull boy with the dirty mind, and
his mother and Meyer through love thinking him good. What she saw in her
silence hurt her.

Her hurt flowed out in fear. She saw her child: a great fear came on
Esther.--Flora is small and white, the world is full of men with thick
lips, hairy hands, of men who will lift her skirt and kiss her, of men
who will press their hairiness against her whiteness.

--There is a Magic, Love, whereby this shame is sweet. Where is it? A
world of men with hair and lips against her whiteness. Where is the
magic against them? Esther was very afraid. She hated her daughter.

III

Meyer Lanich came down from his table and drew down the wide yellow
shade and shut out the night. No more stray customers to enter. He
turned the key of the door. He had his back to the door, seeing his work
and his child who now sat vacant upon the floor and grimed her eyes with
her fists too sleepy to hunt play--seeing his wife. He sought to see
this woman who was his wife. To this end came his words, old words, old
words he had tried often, often failed with, words that would come again
since they were the words of his seeking to find the woman his wife.

"Esther," he said, "it is nine o'clock and I have much work to do--a
couple of hours of work.--"--I could work faster alone, it will be
midnight so with this pain for ever in my eyes. "Esther won't you go
home and put Florchen to bed?"

She looked at him with her full lovely eyes. Why since he saw them
lovely could he not see them loving? He had said these words before, so
often before. She looked at him.

"Esther," he said, "it is bad for a baby of four to be up so late. It is
bad for her to sit around on the floor under the gas--smelling the gas
and the gasoline and the steam of the clothes. Can't you consider
Flora?"

"I am afraid."

"What is there to be afraid of? Can't you see? Why aren't you afraid of
what will happen to Flora? Eh--that don't frighten you, does it? She's a
baby. If my Mother could see--"

"Meyer, I can't. Meyer, I can't. You know that I can't."

He waved his hands. She