'Does Mrs. Mandle still live here?' he asked with a horrible heart-sinking.
'Yes, first floor,' said Gideon, staring.
Ah, how his heart leapt up again! Haigitcha, his dear Haigitcha! He went up the ever-open dusty staircase jostling against a spruce, handsome young fellow who was hurrying down. He looked back with a sudden conviction that it was his son. His heart swelled with pride and affection; but ere he could cry 'Yankely' the young fellow was gone. He heard the whirr of machines. Yes, she had kept on the workshop, the wonderful creature, though crippled by his loss and the want of capital. Doubtless S. Cohn's kind-hearted firm had helped her to tide over the crisis. Ah, what a blackguard he had been! And she had brought up the children unaided. Dear Haigitcha! What madness had driven him from her side? But he would make amends—yes, he would make amends. He would slip again into his own niche, take up the old burdens and the old delights—perhaps even be again treasurer of 'The Gates of Mercy.'
He knocked at the door. Haigitcha herself opened it.
He wanted to cry her name, but the word stuck in his throat. For this was not his Haigitcha; this was a new creature, cold, stern, tragic, prematurely aged, framed in the sombre shadows of the staircase. And in her eyes was neither rapture nor remembrance.
'What is it?' she asked.
'I am Elkan; don't you know me?'
She stared with a little gasp, and a heaving of the flat breasts. Then she said icily: 'And what do you want?'
'I am come back,' he muttered hoarsely in Yiddish.
'And where is Gittel?' she answered in the same idiom.