Meyer Lanich came down from his table and drew down the wide yellow shade and shut out the night. No more stray customers to enter. He turned the key of the door. He had his back to the door, seeing his work and his child who now sat vacant upon the floor and grimed her eyes with her fists too sleepy to hunt play—seeing his wife. He sought to see this woman who was his wife. To this end came his words, old words, old words he had tried often, often failed with, words that would come again since they were the words of his seeking to find the woman his wife.
"Esther," he said, "it is nine o'clock and I have much work to do—a couple of hours of work.—"—I could work faster alone, it will be midnight so with this pain for ever in my eyes. "Esther won't you go home and put Florchen to bed?"
She looked at him with her full lovely eyes. Why since he saw them lovely could he not see them loving? He had said these words before, so often before. She looked at him.
"Esther," he said, "it is bad for a baby of four to be up so late. It is bad for her to sit around on the floor under the gas—smelling the gas and the gasoline and the steam of the clothes. Can't you consider Flora?"
"I am afraid."
"What is there to be afraid of? Can't you see? Why aren't you afraid of what will happen to Flora? Eh—that don't frighten you, does it? She's a baby. If my Mother could see—"
"Meyer, I can't. Meyer, I can't. You know that I can't."
He waved his hands. She was stiff. They came no nearer one to the other. About them each, two poles, swirled thoughts and feeling—a world that did not touch the other.
He clambered back to his work. The room was hot. The gaslight burned. Against his temples it beat harsh air, harsh light, the acrid smells of his work—against her temples.
Esther sat. The words of her man seeking the woman she was had not found for him but had stirred her. Her breast moved fast, but all else of her was stiff. Stiff, all she moved like a thick river drawn against its flow, drawn mounting to its head.—I cannot go home alone, to the empty hall alone, into the black rooms alone. Against their black the flicker of a match that may go out, the dare of a gas-light that is all white and shrieking with its fear of the black world it is in. She could not go home alone.—For, Esther, in your loneliness you will find your life. I am afraid of my life.