Miss Binswanger lay whitely in her chair, weakened as if the blood had flowed out of her heart. From the granitoid square at the base of the air-shaft came the rattle of after-dinner dishes and the babble of dialect. Mr. Binswanger wept the tears of physical weakness.
"I—I'm gone, Becky. What you want for Poil I can't do. I'm gone under. We got to start over again. It was the interurban done it, Becky. I needed new capital to meet the new competition. I—I could have stood up under it then, Becky, but—but—"
"Ach, my husband—for myself I don't care. Ach, my husband."
"I—I'm gone, Becky—gone."
He rose to his feet and shambled feebly to his bedroom, his fingers feeling of the furniture for support, and his breath coming in the long wheezes of dry tears. And in the cradle of her mother's arms Miss Binswanger wept the hot tears of black despair; they seeped through the showy lace yoke and scalded her mother's heart.
"Oh, my baby! Ach, my husband! A good man like him, a good man like him!"
"Don't cry, mamma, don't—cry."
"Nothing he ever refused me, and now when we should be able to do for our children and—"
"Don't cry, mamma, don't cry."
"If—if he had the money—for a boy like Max—he'd give it, Poil. Such a good husband—such—ach, I go me in to papa now—poor papa. I've been bad, Poil; we must make it up to him; we—"