“Some day nothing!  A woman like gramaw can’t do much more than go down-town once a year, and then you talk about taking her to Russia!  You can’t get in there, I—­tell you—­no way you try to fix it after—­the way gramaw—­had—­to leave.  Even before the war Ray Letsky’s father couldn’t get back on business.  There’s nothing for her there, even after she gets there.  In thirty years, do you think you can find those graves?  Do you know the size of Siberia?  No!  But I got to pay—­I got to pay for gramaw’s nonsense.  But I won’t.  I won’t go to Lester if I can’t go right.  I—.”

“Baby, don’t cry so—­for God’s sake, don’t cry so!”

“I wish I was dead!”

“’Sh-h-h!  You’ll wake gramaw.”

“I do!”

“O God, help me to do the right thing!”

“If gramaw could understand, she’d be the first one to tell you the right thing.  Anybody would.”

“No!  No!  That little bank-book and its entries are her life—­her life.”

“She don’t need to know, mama.  I’m not asking that.  That’s the way they always do with old people to keep them satisfied.  Just humor ’em.  Ain’t I the one with life before me—­ain’t I, mama?”

“O God, show me the way!”

“If there was a chance, you think I’d be spoiling things for gramaw?  But there ain’t, mama—­not one.”

“I keep hoping if not before, then after the war.  With the help of Mark Haas—­”

“With the book in her drawer, like always, and the entries changed once in a while, she’ll never know the difference.  I swear to God she’ll never know the difference, mama!”

“Poor gramaw!”

“Mama, promise me—­your little Selene.  Promise me?”

“Selene, Selene, can we keep it from her?”

“I swear we can, mama.”

“Poor, poor gramaw!”

“Mama?  Mama darling?”

“O God, show me the way!”

“Ain’t it me that’s got life before me?  My whole life?”

“Yes—­Selene.”

“Then, mama, please—­you will—­you will—­darling?”

“Yes, Selene.”

In a large, all-frescoed, seventy-five-dollar-an-evening-with-lights and cloak-room-service ballroom of the Hotel Walsingham, a family hostelry in that family circle of St. Louis known as its West End, the city holds not a few of its charity-whists and benefit musicales; on a dais which can be carried in for the purpose, morning readings of “Little Moments from Little Plays,” and with the introduction of a throne-chair, the monthly lodge-meetings of the Lady Mahadharatas of America.  For weddings and receptions, a lane of red carpet leads up to the slight dais; and lined about the brocade and paneled walls, gilt-and-brocade chairs, with the crest of Walsingham in padded embroidery on the backs.  Crystal chandeliers, icicles of dripping light, glow down upon a scene of parquet floor, draped velours, and mirrors wreathed in gilt.

At Miss Selene Coblenz’s engagement reception, an event properly festooned with smilax and properly jostled with the elbowing figures of waiters tilting their plates of dark-meat chicken salad, two olives, and a finger-roll in among the crowd, a stringed three-piece orchestra, faintly seen and still more faintly heard, played into the babel.