“Not to-day,” was the answer; and the sweet voice was almost discordant in its pathos as it continued, “nor drink, and but for Ahmed the boy had died.”

Gregorio could not answer; there was a lump in his throat that blocked words, opening the gate for sobs.  But he choked down his emotion with an effort and busied himself about the room.  Xantippe sat watching him anxiously, smoothly with nervous fingers the covering of her son’s bed.

As the night advanced the heat increased, and all that disturbed the silence of the room was the echo of the streets.  Gregorio walked to the window and looked out.  Below him he saw the jostling crowd of men and women.  These people, he thought, were happy, and two miserables only dwelt in the city—­his wife and himself.  And whenever he asked himself what was the cause of his misery, the answer was ever the same—­poverty.  He glanced at his son, tossing uneasily in his bed; he looked at his wife, pale and haggard in the moonlight; he remembered his own sufferings all day long in the hot cruel streets, and he spoke unsteadily: 

“Xantippe?”

“Yes.”

“I have thought over things.”

“And I too.”

“We are starving,—­you are starving, and I am starving,—­and all day long I tramp these cursed streets, but gain nothing.  So it will go on, day in, day out.  Not only we ourselves, but our son too must die.  We must save him.”

“Yes,” said Xantippe, quietly, repeating her husband’s words as she kissed the forehead of her child, “we must save him.”

“There is only one way.”

“Only one way,” repeated Xantippe, dreamily.  There was a pause, and then, as though the words had grown to have a meaning to her that she could not fathom, she queried, “What way, Gregorio?”

“That,” he said, roughly, as he caught her by the wrist, and, dragging her to the window, pointed to the women in the street beneath.

Xantippe hid her face on her husband’s breast and cried softly, while she murmured, “No, no; I will never consent.”

“Then the child will die,” answered the Greek, curtly, flinging her from him.

And the poor woman cast herself upon the bed beside her boy, and when her tears ceased for a moment stammered, “When?”

“To-morrow,” was the answer, cruel and peremptory.  And as Gregorio closed the lattice, shutting out the noise of song and laughter, the room echoed with the mighty sobbing of a woman who was betrayed, and who repeated hysterically, while kissing the face of her child, “To-morrow, to-morrow there will be food for you.”

And Gregorio slept peacefully, for the danger of starvation was over; he would yet live to see his son become rich.

And the woman?

He kissed her before he slept, and women always cry.

IV—­CONCERNING TWO WOMEN

Gregorio felt a little bit ashamed of himself next morning.  The excitement had passed, and the full meaning of his words came back to him and made him shudder.  The sun, already risen, sent shafts of light between the lips of the wooden lattice.  A faint sound of life and movement stole upward from the street below.  But Xantippe and the boy still slumbered, though the woman’s form shook convulsively at times, for she sobbed in her sleep.