Rebecca felt herself growing hard and inhuman. Didn’t she love her sister enough to respond to her cry of loneliness? But the next moment she knew that though it tore the heart out of her body she could never stand this bloated ease of the flesh into which Minnie was trying to beguile her.
“Would you want me to marry Moe and bury myself alive in cloaks and suits like you? I’d rather starve on dry crusts where life is real, where there’s still hope for higher things. It would kill me to stay here another day. Your fine food, your fresh air, your velvet limousine smothers me.... It’s all a desert of emptiness painted over with money. Nothing is real. The sky is too blue. The grass is too green. This beauty is all false paint, hiding dry rot. There’s only one hope for you. Leave your killing comforts and come with me.”
“And what about the children?” Minnie leaped to her feet in quick defence. “I want them to have a chance in life. I couldn’t bear to have them go through the misery and dirt that nearly killed me. You’re not a mother. You don’t know a mother’s heart.”
“Your mother’s heart—it’s only selfishness! You’re only trying to save yourself the pain of seeing your children go through the struggle that made you what you are. No,” she corrected, “that made you what you once were.”
Rebecca towered over her sister like the living spirit of struggle revolting against the deadening inertia of ease.
“What is this chance that you are giving your children? To rub sleeves with millionaire children? Will that feed their hungry young hearts? Fire their spirits for higher things? Children’s hands reach out for struggle. Their youth is hungry for hardships, for danger, for the rough fight with life even more than their bodies are hungry for bread.”
Minnie looked at her little sister. From where came that fire, that passion? She saw again Felix Weinberg’s flaming eyes. She heard again his biting truths, the very cadence of his voice.
Minnie buried her throbbing head in the pillows. As surely as Rebecca sold ribbons over the counter at ten cents a yard, so surely Minnie knew that she had sold her own soul for the luxuries which Abe’s money had bought. And now it was out of her power to call this real part of her back. The virus of luxury had eaten into her body and soul till she could no longer exist without it.
“If I could only go back with you,” she sobbed impotently, “if I could only go back.”