"No, Reb Yehùdah, I want nothing, thank you. Farewell!"
He put out his hand to no one, and barely gave me a glance.
And yet, in that one glance, I read that he reproached me, that he would never forgive me. For what? I hardly knew myself.
And again I fainted.
"The third time," I hear my mother say to my father. "It is of no consequence—at her age it often happens—but heaven forbid that Reb Zeinwill should hear of it. He would break off the match. He had enough of that with the last one—the invalid."
I was not an invalid. And I only fainted once more—on the wedding-day, when I saw Reb Zeinwill for the first time.
Never again.
Yesterday even, when the Röfeh, who cuts my Reb Zeinwill's nails every month (otherwise they grow into his fingers), asked me, as he left, if I remembered his "boy," because he had died in a hospital in Warsaw—even then I didn't faint; I only shed one tear. And I was not aware of that, only it seemed to please the Röfeh.
"You are a kind soul," he said, and then I felt it on my cheek.
Nothing more.