"No one told me thou hadst fainted!" Moshé exclaimed, instantly forgetting his own perturbation.
"And yet thou didst guess it!" said Rebecca, a happy little smile dimpling her pale cheek, "and came away after me." Then, her face clouding, "The Satan Mekatrig has tempted us both away from synagogue," she said, "and even when I commence to say Tehillim (Psalms) at home, he interrupts me by sending me my darling husband."
Moshé kissed her in acknowledgment of the complimentary termination of a sentence begun with unquestionable gloom. "But what made my Rivkoly faint?" he asked, glad, on reflection, that his wife's misconception obviated the necessity of explanations. "They ought to have opened the window at the back of the women's room."
Rebecca shuddered. "God forbid!" she cried. "It wasn't the heat—it was that." Her eyes stared a moment at some unseen vision.
"What?" cried Moshé, catching the contagion of horror.
"He would have come in," she said.
"Who would have come in?" he gasped.
"The Satan Mekatrig," replied his wife. "He was outside, and he glared at me as if I prevented his coming in."
A nervous silence followed. Moshé's heart beat painfully. Then he laughed with ghastly merriment. "Thou didst fall asleep from the heat," he said, "and hadst an evil dream."
"No, no," protested his wife earnestly. "As sure as I stand here, no! I was looking into my Chumosh (Pentateuch), following the reading of the Torah, and all at once I felt something plucking my eyes off my book and turning my head to look through the window immediately behind me. I wondered what Satan Mekatrig was distracting my thoughts from the service. For a long time I resisted, but when the reading ceased for a moment the temptation overcame me and I turned and saw him."