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then Morris would get up quietly and, putting on his hat and coat, silently leave the house.

But as a rule, Gertrude was careful not to quarrel with him. Though she had been married to him for ten years and had borne him two children, she still deferred to his greater intellect. She would not even complain when he happened to spend their last few francs on a book, or give them as a loan to one of his colleagues. Nor did she complain when he spent his earnings at meetings or his Sundays at art exhibitions. His interests were alien to her, but she knew that they were his complete life. She had made several attempts to read the books that engrossed him so, but could not seem to guess what it was that captured him. How can people learn anything from books, she wondered?

Morris Berger had left his past far behind him, back among the Carpathian Mountains where the terrain descends into long, flat plains to mingle with the steppes of the Ukraine. In that wild country where the coming of the Spring merges with the strains of Shevchenko's songs, disquieting the heart with longing and unrest. Back where there was a vast cleavage between Jew and Gentile; where the Gentile hurled stones at the Jew and the Jew contented himself with muttered oaths. An unbridgeable abyss had widened over the generations. An ingrained hatred had served as a spark to set on fire all the dark passions that raged with a primitive fury in the souls of the natives.

When in 1919 the Bolsheviks occupied his town, eighteen-year-old Morris, joined the Communist Party. Later he was captured by the Petlurists, who branded him by cutting off his right ear. The wound on the side of his head still flamed red and threatening as an eternal protest against the brutality of his fellow man.

He lived with Gertrude and the children in a flat at the