Tom Hammond’s eyes met Zillah’s. Then he promptly said—
“Yes” to the Jew’s question.
“Right, then! We can explain about the ceremony as we go!” Cohen said, and the quartette left the house.
There was not much time for explanation, but what Tom Hammond heard convinced him that he was a fortunate journalist that day. He had no opportunity of talking with Zillah, but he found his heart beating with a strange wildness whenever his eyes met hers—and they frequently met.
At the door of the synagogue the party had to separate, the two women going one way, Cohen and Hammond another. The building was filling very fast. Presently it was packed to suffocation.
It was Tom Hammond’s first sight of a Jewish congregation in a synagogue. It amazed him. The hatted men and bewigged women—these latter sat behind a grille. The gorgeousness of much of the female finery. The curious “praying shawls”—the “Talith” of the men.
Suddenly a Rabbi began to intone the opening words of the service, reading from the roll of the law, “The Holy Scroll:” “If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger; her husband’s brother shall take her to wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her.... And if the man like not to take his brother’s wife, then let his brother’s wife go up to the gate unto the elders, and say, My husband’s brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of my husband’s brother.
“Then the elder of the city shall call the man, and speak unto him: and if he stand to it, and say, I like not to take her;
“Then shall his brother’s wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and shall spit in his face, and shall answer and say, ‘So shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his brother’s house.’