"Ah!" sobbed Miriam Gold, "I cannot help it. It is as if my soul were bleeding. She was my child, my flesh, my blood!"
"Well, I said little against it at first. But now she has been dead four months, and you are weeping yourself blind. Must we not all die? Did I not have to bury my Radel--and my Rachel--but I will not hurt you."
"I know what you were going to say: that your Rachel was a good child and my Lea was not. But even if she did join the church and marry a Christian, have you it in written testimony, Aunt Malke, that God in heaven--praised be his name!--looks upon her as you do?"
"Yes, Aunt Miriam," said the landlady, solemnly, "we have that testimony. There it is," and she pointed to a copy of a Hebrew Bible which lay in the window. "God does not wish a Leah to become a Barbara."
"We won't discuss it," answered the old woman, wiping her eyes with her apron. "Leave me that one comfort--that God will prove a merciful judge to my poor child. When she was dying she remembered she had been called Leah, and sent and begged me to go to her. But I was cowardly, and let myself be persuaded to offer this last insult to my poor child. She is at rest now; but I am devoured by remorse, and therefore I weep, Aunt Malke, and shall continue to weep till--"
"You know I advised neither for nor against going. I told you to ask the rabbi and other pious men. It was not a woman's business."
"It was a woman's business. Who has a right to step between a mother and her child? They intimidated me. God did not wish it; and when I went to Raphael, he told me my allowance should not be withdrawn if I went, though he could not advise it. 'Your daughter is not dying,' he said. 'She has been long dead. I would not go in your place. You are happier than I, for your Lea did not become a harlot, like my sister. But,' he said--"
A cry of pain, sharp and shrill, rang through the room, so that both women jumped. "What ails you?" they cried, running to the stranger. She had covered her face with her hands, her cloth had slipped from her head, so as to reveal her auburn hair streaked with gray.
The hostess gazed at the flowing hair with disgust, as if a nestful of adders had crawled to meet her.
"What's that?" she exclaimed. "Are you not an honest Jewess, who wears her own hair?"