"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.
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