“I was rocking.  O my God!  I was rocking, and—­”

“Don’t get to it—­mama, please!  Don’t rock yourself that way!  You’ll get yourself dizzy!  Don’t, ma; don’t!”

“Outside—­my boy—­the holler—­O God! in my ears all my life!  My boy—­the papers—­the swords—­Aylorff—­Aylorff—­”

“’Shh-h-h—­mama—­”

“It came through his heart out the back—­a blade with two sides—­out the back when I opened the door; the spur in his face when he fell, Shila—­the spur in his face—­the beautiful face of my boy—­my Aylorff—­my husband before him—­that died to make free!” And fell back, bathed in the sweat of the terrific hiccoughing of sobs.

“Mama, mama!  My God!  What shall we do?  These spells!  You’ll kill yourself, darling.  I’m going to take you back, dearie—­ain’t that enough?  I promise.  I promise.  You mustn’t, mama!  These spells—­they ain’t good for a young girl like Selene to hear.  Mama, ’ain’t you got your own Shila—­your own Selene?  Ain’t that something?  Ain’t it?  Ain’t it?”

Large drops of sweat had come out and a state of exhaustion that swept completely over, prostrating the huddled form in the chair.

“Bed—­my bed!”

With her arms twined about the immediately supporting form of her daughter, her entire weight relaxed, and footsteps that dragged without lift, one after the other, Mrs. Horowitz groped out, one hand feeling in advance, into the gloom of a room adjoining.

“Rest!  O my God! rest!”

“Yes, yes, mama; lean on me.”

“My—­bed.”

“Yes, yes, darling.”

“Bed.”

Her voice had died now to a whimper that lay on the room after she had passed out of it.

When Selene Coblenz, with a gust that swept the room, sucking the lace curtains back against the panes, flung open the door upon that chromatic scene, the two jets of gas were singing softly into its silence, and within the nickel-trimmed baseburner the pink mica had cooled to gray.  Sweeping open that door, she closed it softly, standing for the moment against it, her hand crossed in back and on the knob.  It was as if—­standing there with her head cocked and beneath a shadowy blue sailor-hat, a smile coming out—­something within her was playing, sweetly insistent to be heard.  Philomela, at the first sound of her nightingale self, must have stood thus, trembling with melody.  Opposite her, above the crowded mantelpiece and surmounted by a raffia wreath, the enlarged-crayon gaze of her deceased maternal grandfather, abetted by a horrible device of photography, followed her, his eyes focusing the entire room at a glance.  Impervious to that scrutiny, Miss Coblenz moved a tiptoe step or two farther into the room, lifting off her hat, staring and smiling through a three-shelved cabinet of knickknacks at what she saw far and beyond.  Beneath the two jets, high lights in her hair came out, bronze showing through the brown waves and the patches of curls brought out over her cheeks.