There was no return possible.
In her way stood the Law and two graves: her father's grave and her mother's.
Where is she?
Once every year, on the eve of Pentecost, she shows herself to me again.
She appears in the street, she stands outside at the window, as if she were afraid, as if she had not the power to enter a Jewish home.
She gazes with staring eyes into the room, and sees me there alone.
She looks at me with dismay, supplication, and anger. I understand her.
"Where are they?" she asks in dismay. "Have pity on me!" she says, imploring. And then, in anger, she lays the whole blame of the disaster on us:
"What could I know of your bitter feud with them? You knew, you learned all about it in school, my books told me nothing, not a word!
"Living in the same house with you, I led a separate life. My story-books were like mirrors filled with the bright reflection of other women's lives, and, as I read, my own appeared there in all its dreariness!