“We are starving,—you are starving, and I am starving,—and all day long I tramp these cursed streets, but gain nothing. So it will go on, day in, day out. Not only we ourselves, but our son too must die. We must save him.”
“Yes,” said Xantippe, quietly, repeating her husband’s words as she kissed the forehead of her child, “we must save him.”
“There is only one way.”
“Only one way,” repeated Xantippe, dreamily. There was a pause, and then, as though the words had grown to have a meaning to her that she could not fathom, she queried, “What way, Gregorio?”
“That,” he said, roughly, as he caught her by the wrist, and, dragging her to the window, pointed to the women in the street beneath.
Xantippe hid her face on her husband’s breast and cried softly, while she murmured, “No, no; I will never consent.”
“Then the child will die,” answered the Greek, curtly, flinging her from him.
And the poor woman cast herself upon the bed beside her boy, and when her tears ceased for a moment stammered, “When?”
“To-morrow,” was the answer, cruel and peremptory. And as Gregorio closed the lattice, shutting out the noise of song and laughter, the room echoed with the mighty sobbing of a woman who was betrayed, and who repeated hysterically, while kissing the face of her child, “To-morrow, to-morrow there will be food for you.”
And Gregorio slept peacefully, for the danger of starvation was over; he would yet live to see his son become rich.