When the forms were locked up and the next day's assignment made, the office force was loath to separate. It is regrettable that the virtues of our friends are like our kidneys—we never notice them till something goes wrong. For the first time they were realizing what a tower of strength Isadore had been. As the days had passed they had more often been impressed by his occasional bursts of nervous irascibility, his unaccountable stubbornnesses. He had walked about among them, with his bent shoulder, his wrinkled, lumpy face, as far removed from Mary Ames' sentimentality, or Harry Moore's flippant optimism, as from Levine's ingrowing surliness. His most salient characteristic seemed to have been that he was "always there." Now he was gone.
"He's so modest and simple," Harry said, "that we never noticed how strong he was."
"I wish there was something I could do for him," Nell sniffled.
"Well, I guess the best medicine we can give him," Yetta said, sticking the pin in her hat decisively, "is to report every week that the circulation has jumped."
The accustomed streets were a blur as she walked home. The idea that Isadore was sick, helpless, was as disturbing as if the paper had announced that the Rock of Gibraltar had escaped from its moorings and was floating away.
In the dining-room she found her aunt, with Jewish gloominess, predicting the worst. Yetta went down the hall and knocked lightly at the parlor door. It was opened by a nurse. The room was darkened, but she caught a glimpse—which was to stick in her memory—of Isadore's haggard face above the sheets. The nurse put her finger to her lips and came out into the hall.
"It's typhoid, all right," she said.
"Dangerous?"
"It's always dangerous. But there isn't a better doctor in the city for typhoid than Liebovitz. He'll be in again in a few minutes. I'll go back now."
Yetta stood there in the dim hallway, appalled, looking more closely into the face of Death than she had ever done before. There was something unbelievable in the thought that Isadore might die. All the fibres of her strong young body revolted at the idea. But beyond the closed door the dread fight was in progress. The pale face she had glimpsed was unconscious of it all. As far as Isadore was concerned Death had already won. Liebovitz and the nurse would have to do his fighting for him.