* * *
Still the candles burned on the mellow table: Samson Brenner and Mrs. Luve looked on each other’s faces above the flames. Rising and rising, the candle flames came lower. Lower at last than the faces of the woman and boy, and of the high wine glasses.
She said: “Steadily more and more, I came to think about your People. They were all about me. They were all sorts. I wanted something of them. But they knew nothing. They knew nothing of themselves. Where was the difference between them and us? They had the same women, they had the same money, they played the same miserable games for both. Why did I want something of them?...
“The Truth!... Perhaps because of Leon ... perhaps because of the ministry of Harry; because I knew of my own weakness—I wanted of them the Truth.
“There were six years of the House.”
“And then—?” the boy’s voice was hoarse. He felt the sordid room and the sordid flat. He had forgot the sordid reason of his coming. He felt the sharp incongruence of the wine he had drunk and of the slender glasses, and of the candles that rose and that burned, rising, lower, at the table. “What was the end?”
“The struggle between Jim Statt and Mangel grew. It grew bitter. There was no reason for it. Statt persecuted Abe ... pinched him and tortured him: above all humiliated him. Until what Tessie had foreseen came true.”
“What was that?”
“Mangel the dirty Jew—O he was that!—Mangel turned good.”
* * *