“Open—­Sarah!”

With a narrowing glance, Mrs. Kantor laid to her lips a forefinger of silence.

“Sarah, it’s me!  Quick, I say!”

Then Leon Kantor sprang up, the old prehensile gesture of curving fingers shooting up.

“For God’s sake, ma, let him in!  I can’t stand that infernal battering.”

“Abrahm, go away!  Leon’s got to have quiet before his concert.”

“Just a minute, Sarah.  Open quick!”

With a spring, his son was at the door, unlocking and flinging it back.

“Come in, pa.”

The years had weighed heavily upon Abrahm Kantor in avoirdupois only.  He was himself plus eighteen years, fifty pounds, and a new sleek pomposity that was absolutely oleaginous.  It shone roundly in his face, doubling of chin, in the bulge of waistcoat, heavily gold-chained, and in eyes that behind the gold-rimmed glasses gave sparklingly forth his estate of well-being.

“Abrahm, didn’t I tell you not to dare to—­”

On excited balls of feet that fairly bounced him, Abrahm Kantor burst in.

“Leon—­mamma—­I got out here an old friend—­Sol Ginsberg—­you remember, mamma, from brasses—­”

“Abrahm—­not now—­”

“Go way with your ‘not now!’ I want Leon should meet him.  Sol, this is him—­a little grown-up from such a Nebich like you remember him—­nu?  Sarah, you remember Sol Ginsberg?  Say—­I should ask you if you remember your right hand?  Ginsberg & Esel, the firm.  This is his girl, a five years’ contract signed yesterday—­five hundred dollars an opera for a beginner—­six roles—­not bad—­nu?”

“Abrahm, you must ask Mr. Ginsberg please to excuse Leon until after his concert—­”

“Shake hands with him, Ginsberg.  He’s had his hand shook enough in his life, and by kings, too—­shake it once more with an old bouncer like you!”

Mr. Ginsberg, not unlike his colleague in rotundities, held out a short, a dimpled hand.

“It’s a proud day,” he said, “for me to shake the hands from mine old friend’s son and the finest violinist living to-day.  My little daughter—­”

“Yes, yes, Gina.  Here shake hands with him.  Leon, they say a voice like a fountain.  Gina Berg—­eh, Ginsberg—­is how you stage-named her?  You hear, mamma, how fancy—­Gina Berg?  We go hear her, eh?”

There was about Miss Gina Berg, whose voice could soar to the tirra-lirra of a lark and then deepen to mezzo, something of the actual slimness of the poor, maligned Elsa so long buried beneath the buxomness of divas.  She was like a little flower that in its crannied nook keeps dewy longest.

“How do you do, Leon Kantor?”

There was a whir through her English of three acquired languages.

“How do you do?”

“We—­father and I—­travelled once all the way from Brussels to Dresden to hear you play.  It was worth it.  I shall never forget how you played the ‘Humoresque.’  It made me laugh and cry.”