The long days of pain grew longer—the summer was coming, harbingered by sunny days that flooded the wards with golden mockery. The evening Herzel brought the Get, Sarah could have read every word on the parchment plainly, if her eyes had not been blinded by tears.
She put out her hand toward her husband, groping for the document he bore. He placed it in her burning palm. The fingers closed automatically upon it, then relaxed, and the paper fluttered to the floor. But Sarah was no longer a wife.
Herzel was glad to hide his burning face by stooping for the fallen bill of divorcement. He was long picking it up. When his eyes met hers again, she had propped herself up in her bed. Two big round tears trickled down her cheeks, but she received the parchment calmly and thrust it into her bosom.
"Let it lie there," she said stonily, "there where thy head hath lain. Blessed be the true Judge."
"Thou art not angry with me, Sarah?"
"Why should I be angry? She was right—I am but a dead woman. Only no one may say Kaddish for me, no one may pray for the repose of my soul. I am not angry, Herzel. A wife should light the Sabbath candles, and throw in the fire the morsel of dough. But thy home was desolate, there was none to do these things. Here I have all I need. Now thou wilt be happy, too."
"Thou hast been a good wife, Sarah," he murmured, touched.
"Recall not the past; we are strangers now," she said, with recurrent harshness.
"But I may come and see thee—sometimes." He had stirrings of remorse as the moment of final parting came.
"Wouldst thou reopen my wounds?"