“My son—­my boy—­his father before him—­”

“Mama—­mama, please don’t let a spell come on!  It’s all right.  Shila’s going to fix it.  Any day now, maybe—­”

“You’m a good girl.  You’m a good girl, Shila.”  Tears were coursing down to a mouth that was constantly wry with the taste of them.

“And you’re a good mother, mama.  Nobody knows better than me how good.”

“You’m a good girl, Shila.”

“I was thinking last night, mama, waiting up for Selene—­just thinking how all the good you’ve done ought to keep your mind off the spells, dearie.”

“My son—­”

“Why, a woman with as much good to remember as you’ve got oughtn’t to have time for spells.  I got to thinking about Coblenz, mama, how—­you never did want him, and when I—­I went and did it, anyway, and made my mistake, you stood by me to—­to the day he died.  Never throwing anything up to me!  Never nothing but my good little mother, working her hands to the bone after he got us out here to help meet the debts he left us.  Ain’t that a satisfaction for you to be able to sit and think, mama, how you helped—­”

“His feet—­blood from my heart in the snow—­blood from my heart!”

“The past is gone, darling.  What’s the use tearing yourself to pieces with it?  Them years in New York when it was a fight even for bread, and them years here trying to raise Selene and get the business on a footing, you didn’t have time to brood then, mama.  That’s why, dearie, if only you’ll keep yourself busy with something—­the wreaths—­the—­”

“His feet—­blood from my—­”

“But I’m going to take you back, mama.  To papa’s grave.  To Aylorff’s.  But don’t eat your heart out until it comes, darling.  I’m going to take you back, mama, with every wreath in the stack; only, you mustn’t eat out your heart in spells.  You mustn’t, mama; you mustn’t.”

Sobs rumbled up through Mrs. Horowitz, which her hand to her mouth tried to constrict.

“For his people he died.  The papers—­I begged he should burn them—­he couldn’t—­I begged he should keep in his hate—­he couldn’t—­in the square he talked it—­the soldiers—­he died for his people—­they got him—­the soldiers—­his feet in the snow when they took him—­the blood in the snow—­O my God!—­my—­God!”

“Mama darling, please don’t go over it all again.  What’s the use making yourself sick?  Please!”

She was well forward in her chair now, winding her dry hands one over the other with a small rotary motion.

“I was rocking—­Shila-baby in my lap—­stirring on the fire black lentils for my boy—­black lentils—­he—­”

“Mama!”

“My boy.  Like his father before him.  My—­”

“Mama, please!  Selene is coming any minute now.  You know how she hates it.  Don’t let yourself think back, mama.  A little will-power, the doctor says, is all you need.  Think of to-morrow, mama; maybe, if you want, you can come down and sit in the store awhile and—­”