On the next day and the day following the great joy was with him still. Beruriah’s astonishment likewise continued. Once and again she wished to stop him at one of their accidental meetings and ask the significance of the great change that had come over him. But Beruriah would not ask. Not the wife of Rabbi Mayer. What was this student, after all, to her? Why should she be at all concerned with what was passing in the heart of this strange man? She was neither his mother nor his sister; not even a friend of former years. Did it become Beruriah to be inquisitive? Was Rabbi Mayer’s wife, then, like other women? But she noticed that the stranger had become even handsomer, more powerful, more masculine.
Sabbath eve came once again and he said grace and sang the holy songs, blessing the Lord with a voice more exalted than ever, more filled than ever with the Sabbath spirit, more than ever inspired and inspiring. Again he looked not often at his hostess, but when he raised his eyes to seek her glance, they had a faraway look filled with admiration and ecstasy, and their colour was the colour of a flaming ruby set in black, as if the Sabbath candles glowed within them.
And again that night on his couch he sang into the darkness of his room various passages from the Bible, which he knew by heart, and in particular many verses from the Song of Songs, the song of love and passion and infinite yearning. His voice throbbed with joy and yet it quivered with a deep unrest; and a great yearning spoke in it, as if calling for something that could render its happiness complete.
And Beruriah lay quite restless in her place. The singer’s voice inundated her being, nor could she banish its magnetic sound. She tried to think of Rabbi Mayer, but instead found herself repeating the passages that came to her from Simeon’s room. And suddenly there flashed upon her the idea that Rabbi Ismael’s son must cherish a love in his heart. It must be a wife or a sweetheart; either he loved her with intense passion or was longing for her endlessly. And if his voice was now so joyful it must be that of the thirty days a third had already passed, and he would soon return to his beloved.
Now, however, she could no longer repeat after him the verses from the Song of Songs, from him to her,—his beloved; his wife or his sweetheart. Beruriah buried her head in her pillows, pulled the coverlet over it, and stopped her ears with her hands so as to keep out Simeon’s voice and his love verses; she turned all her thoughts to Rabbi Mayer and began to recite the other passages from the Song of Songs,—the passages from her to him, and her heart languished for him, for her husband, for her beloved, for her great love and yearning.
And once more, after the Sabbath closing prayers, before he went into his room he turned to her with great tenderness.
“Forgive me the glances, my hostess, that I cast upon you yester eve and to-day.”
She shuddered at the unexpectedness of his words, and could not understand his begging pardon.
“What manner of glances were they?” she asked.
He whispered softly, “Then you did not notice them?”