Days passed. There was no lack of unspoken tenderness between us. That she was tremulously glad to see me every time I came home was quite obvious, but she bore herself in such a manner that I never ventured to allude to my feeling, much less to touch her hand or sit close to her.
"It is as well that I should not," I often said to myself. "Am I not happy as it is? Is it not bliss enough to have a home—her home? It would be too awful to forfeit it." I registered a vow to live up to the promise she had exacted from me, but I knew that I would break it
She was in love with me. She had an iron will, but I hoped that this, too, would soon be broken.
There were moments when I would work myself up to an exalted, religious kind of mood over it. "I should be a vile creature if I interfered with the peace of this house," I would exhort myself, passionately. "Max has been a warm friend to me. Oh, I will be good."
Dora talked less than usual. She, too, seemed to be a changed person. She was particularly taciturn when we happened to be alone in the house, and then it would be difficult for us to look each other in the face. Such tête-à-têtes occurred once or twice a week, quite late in the evening. I was very busy at the shop and I could never leave it before 10, 11, or even 12, except on Sabbath eve (Friday night), when it was closed. On those evenings when Max stayed out very late I usually found her alone in the little dining-room, sewing, mending, or—more often—poring over Lucy's school reader or story-book
After exchanging a few perfunctory sentences with her, each of us aware of the other's embarrassment, I would take a seat a considerable distance from her and take up a newspaper or clipping from one, while she went on with her work or reading. Lucy had begun to take juvenile books out of the circulating library of the Educational Alliance, so her mother would read them also. The words were all short and simple and Dora had not much difficulty in deciphering their meaning. Anyhow, she now never sought my assistance for her reading. I can still see her seated at the table, a considerable distance from me, moving her head from word to word and from line to line, and silently working her lips, as though muttering an incantation. I would do her all sorts of little services (though she never asked for any), all silently, softly, as if performing a religious rite
I have said that on such occasions I would read my newspaper or some clipping from it. In truth I read little else in those days. Editorials of the daily press interested me as much as the most sensational news, and if some of the more important leading articles in my paper had to be left unread on the day of their publication I would clip them and glance them over at the next leisure moment, sometimes days later
The financial column was followed by me with a sense of being a member of a caste for which it was especially intended, to the exclusion of the rest of the world. At first the jargon of that column made me feel as though I had never learned any English at all. But I was making headway in this jargon, too, and when I struck a recondite sentence I would cut the few lines out and put them in my pocket, on the chance of coming across somebody who could interpret them for me. Often, too, I would clip and put away a paragraph containing some curious piece of information or a bit of English that was an addition to my knowledge of the language. My inside pocket was always full of all sorts of clippings
CHAPTER XII
It was about this time that I found myself confronted with an unexpected source of anxiety in my business affairs. There were several circumstances that made it possible for a financial midget like myself to outbid the lions of the cloak-and-suit industry. Now, however, a new circumstance arose which threatened to rob me of my chief advantage and to undermine the very foundation of my future