Kantor family drew up, dipping first into the rich black soup of the
occasion. All except Mrs. Kantor.

"Esther, you dish up. I'm going somewhere. I'll be back in a minute."

"Where you going, Sarah? Won't it keep until--"

But even in the face of query, Sarah Kantor was two flights down and
well through the lambent aisles of the copper-shop. Outside, she broke
into run, along two blocks of the indescribable bazaar atmosphere of
Grand Street, then one block to the right.

Before Mattel's show-window, a jet of bright gas burned into a
jibberwock land of toys. There was that in Sarah Kantor's face that was
actually lyrical as, fumbling at the bosom of her dress, she entered.

To Leon Kantor, by who knows what symphonic scheme of things, life was a
chromatic scale, yielding up to him, through throbbing, living nerves of
sheep-gut, the sheerest semitones of man's emotions.

When he tucked his Stradivarius beneath his chin the book of life seemed
suddenly translated to him in melody. Even Sarah Kantor, who still
brewed for him, on a small portable stove carried from city to city and
surreptitiously unpacked in hotel suites, the blackest of soups, and,
despite his protestation, would incase his ears of nights in an old
home-made device against their flightiness, would oftentimes bleed
inwardly at this sense of his isolation.

There was a realm into which he went alone, leaving her as detached as
the merest ticket purchaser at the box-office.