“I’d be willing to pay the price,” she replied.

“But why?” he asked with impatience.  “Why pay when you don’t have to?  Why not by taking one year off get strength for twenty years’ work later on?  You’d be a different woman!”

“Yes, I think I should be.  I’d never be the same again.  You don’t quite understand, you see.  This work of mine with children—­well, it’s like Edith’s having a baby.  You have to do it while you’re young.”

“That works both ways,” her father growled.

“What do you mean?” He hesitated: 

“Don’t you want any children of your own?”

Again she turned her eyes toward his, then closed them and lay perfectly still.  “Now I’ve done it,” he thought anxiously.  She reached over and took his hand.

“Let’s talk of our summer’s vacation,” she said.

A little while later she fell asleep.

Downstairs he soon grew restless and after a time he went out for a walk.  But he felt tired and oppressed, and as he had often done of late he entered a little “movie” nearby, where gradually the pictures, continually flashing out of the dark, drove the worries from his mind.  For a half an hour they held his gaze.  Then he fell into a doze.  He was roused by a roar of laughter, and straightening up in his seat with a jerk he looked angrily around.  Something broadly comic had been flashed upon the screen; and men and women and children, Italians, Jews and Irish, jammed in close about him, a dirty and perspiring mass, had burst into a terrific guffaw.  Now they were suddenly tense again and watching the screen in absorbed suspense, while the crude passions within themselves were played upon in the glamorous dark.  And Roger scanned their faces—­one moment smiling, all together, as though some god had pulled a string; then mawkish, sentimental, soft; then suddenly scowling, twitching, with long rows of animal eyes.  But eager—­eager all the time!  Hungry people—­yes, indeed!  Hungry for all the good things in the town, and for as many bad things, too!  On one who tried to feed this mob there was no end to their demands!  What was one woman’s life to them?  Deborah’s big family!

* * * * *

Edith came to the house one afternoon, and she was in Deborah’s room when her father returned from his office.  Her convalescence over at last, she was leaving for the mountains.

“Do learn your lesson, Deborah dear,” she urged upon her sister.  “Let Sarah pack your trunk at once and come up with me on Saturday night.”

“I can’t get off for two weeks yet.”

“Why can’t you?” Edith demanded.  And when Deborah spoke of fresh air camps and baby farms and other work, Edith’s impatience only grew.  “You’ll have to leave it to somebody else!  You’re simply in no condition!” she cried.

“Impossible,” said Deborah.  Edith gave a quick sigh of exasperation.

“Isn’t it enough,” she asked, “to have worked your nerves to a frazzle already?  Why can’t you be sensible?  You’ve got to think of yourself a little!”