“Are you all right?” said Mary. But before she finished the question, Hetty started to fall. Mary tried to hold her, but she couldn’t, and Hetty crashed to the ground.

It was quite a piece of luck that a shoeshine boy should have been passing right beside them just then. He put down his things and helped them right away. He propped Hetty up, and while Mary held her, he hailed a taxi, and then, since Hetty seemed to be unconscious, he helped Mary get her into the taxi and asked if he should come with her to the house. “Oh,” said Mary, “that would be so kind.”

So the boy put his things on the floor of the taxi, and Mary told the taxi to go down Fifth, and in no time they were on their way. Hetty’s mouth had fallen open; she seemed to shudder. The boy leaned forward and propped her up, awkwardly, in the corner of the seat.

“Gramercy Park,” said the boy to the driver.

“How do you know that?” asked Mary.

“Been to the house,” said the boy.

Then Mary realized she had seen him before.

“Why, you’re the brother of the Italian girl who came to lunch a few months back,” she said. “Your sister works at the Triangle Factory.”

The boy said nothing. And Mary remembered the terrible tragedy that had happened there in March. That awful fire. It was a huge scandal—one hundred and forty people had died, mostly the Jewish girls who worked there.

“I hope your sister was all right,” she said anxiously.

For a moment, Salvatore Caruso did not reply. He was looking at the older woman. He realized, which Mary still did not, that Hetty Master had just died. That would be enough for this nice lady to worry about today.

“She’s fine,” he said.

Empire State

1917

FOR OVER A century, the United States of America had avoided the tragic quarrels and follies of the Old World. Three years ago, when the countries of Europe, trapped in their complex tangle of rivalries and alliances, had begun the Great War, William and Rose Master, like most thinking Americans, had hoped their country could stay out of the futile quarrel. And for a while it had seemed that this would be accomplished.

Was there a strategic necessity to become engaged? Not really. Was there an emotional reason? Although most Americans assumed that their country was predominantly English, there were in fact more Americans of German descent than either English or Irish. Nor, in the year 1917, were the British too popular. For Britain’s cruel crushing of the Easter Rising had enraged Irish Americans, at least; and the British naval blockade had harassed countless American vessels. President Woodrow Wilson, who still liked the British, sent them food. But that was about it. If the Europeans wanted to tear themselves apart again, most people said, that was their problem. Avoid foreign entanglements.