But Fanny never knew whether her mother finished that
sentence or not. She remembered waiting for the end of it,
to learn what it was her mother hoped. And she had felt a
sudden, scalding drop on her hand where her mother bent over
her. And the next thing she knew it was morning, with
mellow September sunshine.


CHAPTER FOUR

It was the week following this feat of fasting that two
things happened to Fanny Brandeis--two seemingly unimportant
and childish things--that were to affect the whole tenor of
her life. It is pleasant to predict thus. It gives a
certain weight to a story and a sense of inevitableness. It
should insure, too, the readers's support to the point, at
least, where the prediction is fulfilled. Sometimes a
careless author loses sight altogether of his promise, and
then the tricked reader is likely to go on to the very final
page, teased by the expectation that that which was hinted
at will be revealed.

Fanny Brandeis had a way of going to the public library on
Saturday afternoons (with a bag of very sticky peanut candy
in her pocket, the little sensualist!) and there, huddled in
a chair, dreamily and almost automatically munching peanut
brittle, her cheeks growing redder and redder in the close
air of the ill-ventilated room, she would read, and read,
and read. There was no one to censor her reading, so she