Finally, toward morning Nicholas slept, and at ten o’clock of a rain-swept Sunday forenoon awoke, as he knew he must, to the grip of a blinding headache, so called for want of a better noun to interpret the kind of agony which, starting somewhere around his eyes, could prick each nerve of his body into a little flame, as if countless matches had been struck.

As a youngster these attacks had not been infrequent, usually after a fit of crying.  The first, in fact, had followed the burning of the cat; a duet of twin spasms then, howled into Sara’s apron, And once after he had fished an exhausted comrade out of an ice hole in Bronx Park.  They had followed the lead-pipe affairs and the Chinese-laundry episode with dreadful inevitability.  But it had been five years since the last—­the night his mother had fainted with terror at what she had found concealed in the toes of his gymnasium shoes.

Incredible that into his manhood should come the waving specter of those early passions.

At eleven o’clock, after she heard him up and moving about, his mother carried him his kiss and his coffee, steaming black, the way he liked it.  She had wanted to bring him an egg—­in fact, had prepared one, to just his liking of two minutes and thirty seconds—­but had thought better of it, and wisely, because he drank the coffee at a quick gulp and set down the cup with his mouth wry and his eyes squeezed tight.  From the taste of it he remembered horridly the litter of tall glasses beside the gilt clock.

With all her senses taut not to fuss around him with little jerks and pullings, Sara jerked and pulled.  Too well she knew that furrow between his eyes and wanted unspeakably to tuck him back into bed, lower the shades, and prepare him a vile mixture good for exactly everything that did not ail him.  But Sara could be wise even with her son.  So instead she flung up the shade, letting him wince at the clatter, dragged off the bedclothes into a tremendous heap on the chair, beat up the pillows, and turned the mattress with a single-handed flop.

“The Sunday-morning papers are in the dining room, son.”

“Uhm!”

He was standing in his dressing gown at the rain-lashed window, strumming.  Lean, long, and, to Sara, godlike, with the thick shock of his straight hair still wet from the shower.

“Mrs. Berkowitz telephoned already this morning with such a grand compliment for you, son.  Her brother-in-law, Judge Rosen, says you’re the brains of your firm even if you are only the junior partner yet, and your way looks straight ahead for big things.”

“Uhm!  Who’s talking out there so incessantly, mother?”

“That’s your uncle Aaron.  He came over for Sunday-morning breakfast with your father.  You should see the way he tracked up my hall with his wet shoes.  I’m sending him right back home with your father.  They should clutter up your aunt Gussie’s house with their pinochle and ashes.  I had ’em last Sunday.  She don’t need to let herself off so easy every week.  It’s enough if I ask them all over here for supper to-night.  Not?”