Words to pull him aloof: “I am afraid we don’t read that book ... half enough.... I don’t I mean,” he blushed. “Do we, Mrs. Luve?”
—Wrong. Wrong! A delicate line left ... he felt left ... under her folded thin lip. Lip folded away.
“It’s a rattling good book.”
“O but you do.”
“I?”
“You read it enough.... You’re a Jew.”
“I’m a Jew,” he repeated. Above her and the table the flourishes and bulgings of the chandelier ... brass gas ... were lewd. “I’m a Jew. If there’s any soul in me worth speaking of, it’s in that book.” She leaned forward upon the table with elbows drawn tight back. “Yet I can’t read a word of it, except in English.... I’m ashamed of that.”
She laughed embarrassed. He was understanding deeper he could not understand. She was up swiftly. She took the Bible, opened a door in the sideboard. Glint of glasses, plush, odor of liquors. She placed the Bible within them.
“I suppose,” a smile to her face, the first: as sudden again her face was grey,” ...you came for Thelma?”
“Why ... yes.”—Of course for that I came, for that only I come ever to your dirty flat.... She has delicate fingers.... How else did I come at first? Dirty? There was a silence fringing his questions, veiling them, making them false. In the silence the presence of strangeness.