“‘Spring,’ he says; ‘spring!’ Crossing the seas from me!  To live through months with that sea between us—­my boy maybe shot—­my—­”

“Mamma, please!”

“I can’t help it, Leon; I’m not one of those fine mothers that can be so brave.  Cut out my heart, but leave my boy—­my wonder-boy—­my child I prayed for!”

“There’s other mothers, ma, with sons.”

“Yes, but not wonder-sons!  A genius like you could so easy get excused, Leon.  Give it up.  Genius it should be the last to be sent to—­the slaughter-pen.  Leon darlink—­don’t go!”

“Ma, ma—­you don’t mean what you’re saying.  You wouldn’t want me to reason that way.  You wouldn’t want me to hide behind my—­violin.”

“I would!  Would!  You should wait for the draft.  With my Roody and even my baby Boris enlisted, ain’t it enough for one mother?  Since they got to be in camp, all right I say, let them be there, if my heart breaks for it, but not my wonder-child!  You get the exemption, Leon, right away for the asking.  Stay with me Leon!  Don’t go away!  The people at home got to be kept happy with music.  That’s being a soldier, too, playing their troubles away.  Stay with me, Leon!  Don’t go leave me—­don’t—­don’t—­”

He suffered her to lie, tear-drenched, back into his arms, holding her close in his compassion for her, his own face twisting.

“God, ma, his—­is awful!  Please—­you make us ashamed—­all of us!  I don’t know what to say.  Esther, come quiet her—­for God’s sake quiet her!”

From her place in the sobbing circle, Esther Kantor crossed to kneel beside her mother.

“Mamma, darling, you’re killing yourself!  What if every family went on this way?  You want papa to come in and find us all crying?  Is this the way you want Leon to spend his last hour with us—­”

“O God—­God!”

“I mean his last hour until he comes back, darling.  Didn’t you just hear him say, darling, it may be by spring?”

“’Spring’—­’spring’—­never no more springs for me—­”

“Just think, darling, how proud we should be.  Our Leon, who could so easily have been excused, not even to wait for the draft.”

“It’s not too late yet—­please, Leon—­”

“Our Roody and Boris both in camp, too, training to serve their country.  Why, mamma, we ought to be crying for happiness!  As Leon says, surely the Kantor family who fled out of Russia to escape massacre should know how terrible slavery can be.  That’s why we must help our boys, mamma, in their fight to make the world free.  Right, Leon?”—­trying to smile with her red-rimmed eyes.

“We’ve got no fight with no one!  Not a child of mine was ever raised to so much as lift a finger against no one.  We’ve got no fight with no one.”

“We have got a fight with some one.  With autocracy!  Only, this time it happens to be Hunnish autocracy.  You should know it, mamma; oh, you should know it deeper down in you than any of us, the fight our family right here has got with autocracy!”