One morning as he was painting her, he said:—
“I can’t believe you are going away.”
“It is true, more’s the pity.”
“But you are not going, for I will marry you.”
He said this in a matter-of-fact tone as he went on with his painting. The picture was coming on well and he was pleased with it. He stepped back and looked at it from different angles. It seemed a long time before she made the expected matter-of-fact reply, and he looked up at her. She was hanging her head and plucking at her skirt nervously. She heard him stop in his work, and she replied:—
“I don’t . . . think . . . I want to marry you, Mendel. I don’t . . . think . . . I want to marry anybody.”
“I’m making plenty of money and I can get commissions for portraits. I could make it up with Birnbaum. We could go to Italy together.”
“Don’t make it harder for both of us, Mendel. . . . I don’t want . . . to marry.”
“You will go back home, then?”