“What are you doing in this town so long?” he then asked, in a rage. “I thought you had left long since. What do you want of us all? Do you want to get everybody in trouble?”
“How will I get you in trouble? Am I the only Jewish woman who has come to Zorki these few days? Have I no right to be here like everybody else? Besides, it’s to bid you good-bye that I want to see you now. I am going away.”
Her few words, uttered with simple earnestness, had a softening effect on him.
“You look like a good girl,” he said, frowning at her amicably. “Tell me frankly: are you and my son having a love affair?”
Clara coloured literally to the roots of her brown hair. She paused to regain her self-possession and then said, with a smile at once shamefaced and amused:
“It is not true, Reb Yossl. What is more, your son and I are not even acquainted.”
“Can that be possible!”
“It’s the absolute truth I am telling you, Reb Yossl.”
He shrugged his shoulder and proceeded to question her on his son’s case, on his mode of life before he was arrested, on the meaning of the struggle to which he had dedicated himself.