and singing into the hearts of his hearers.

Later, and because these were his people and because they were dark and
Slavic with his Slavic darkness, he played, as if his very blood were
weeping, the "Kol Nidre," which is the prayer of his race for atonement.

And then the super-amphitheater, filled with those whose emotions lie
next to the surface and whose pores have not been closed over with a
water-tight veneer, burst into its cheers and its tears.

There were fifteen recalls from the wings, Abrahm Kantor standing
counting them off on his fingers, and trembling to receive the
Stradivarius. Then, finally, and against the frantic negative pantomime
of his manager, a scherzo, played so lacily that it swept the house in
lightest laughter.

When Leon Kantor finally completed his program, they were loath to let
him go, crowding down the aisles upon him, applauding up, down, round
him, until the great disheveled house was like the roaring of a sea,
and he would laugh and throw out his arm in wide-spread helplessness,
and always his manager in the background, gesticulating against too much
of his precious product for the money, ushers already slamming up
chairs, his father's arms out for the Stradivarius, and, deepest in the
gloom of the wings, Sarah Kantor, in a rocker especially dragged out for
her, and from the depths of the black-silk reticule, darning his socks.

"_Bravo_--_bravo_! Give us the 'Humoresque'--Chopin
nocturne--polonaise--'Humoresque'! _Bravo_--_bravo_!"

And even as they stood, hatted and coated, importuning and pressing in