As he repeated the chant, beating his breast, his heart began to swell and heave with the old racial hunger for purging, for cleanness.
“My sin!” he cried. “I took my virgin gift of song and dragged it through the mud of Broadway!”
His turbulent penance burst into sobs—broke through the parched waste within him. From afar off a phrase fragrant as dew, but vague and formless, trembled before him. With a surge of joy, he seized pencil and paper. Only to catch and voice the first gush of his returning spirit!
“Wake up, you nut!”
Shapiro had come in unobserved, and stood before him like a grinning Mephistopheles. Berel looked up, startled. The air boiled before him.
“See here—we got the chance of our life!” Shapiro, in his enthusiasm, did not notice Berel’s grim mood. He shook the poet by the shoulder. “Ten thousand bucks, and not a worry in your bean! Just sign your name to this.”
With a shudder of shame, Berel glanced at the manuscript and flung it from him.
“Sign my name to this trash?”
“Huh! You’re mighty squeamish all of a sudden!”
“I can’t choke no more my conscience.”