“I don’t mind telling you,” she said. She hesitated for a moment, gave another short laugh, and then went on: “I was thinking that that poor woman would not have starved if she had married Mandelkern. I was also thinking that I am going to marry Mandelkern. I was also thinking how terrible it would be if I did not marry Mandelkern, and would, some day, have starvation to fear—like that woman.” Having unburdened her mind, she seemed relieved, and, in a moment became her old self. With a playful gesture she seized David’s arm and shook him. “Come, sleepyhead, wake up!” she cried gaily. “Don’t stand there staring at me as though I were a ghost. What were you saying about the Rabbi ben Zaccai?” * * * * * David Adler sat at the open window gazing at the swarming stars, whose radiance had begun to pale. The dawn of day was at hand. Even now a faint glow of light suffused the eastern sky. But David saw it not. His eyes were fastened upon Arcturus, whose brightness was yet undimmed, whose lustre transcended the brightness of the myriads of stars that crowded around. Travelling through the immeasurable realms of space, straight to his heart, streamed that bright ray, the messenger of Arcturus, cold, relentless—without hope. QUEER SCHARENSTEIN “Scharenstein?” they would say. “Oh, Scharenstein is queer! He is good-hearted, poor fellow, but——” Then they would tap their foreheads significantly and shake their heads. He had come from a hamlet in Bessarabia—a hamlet so small that you would not find it on any map, even if you could pronounce the name. The whole population of the hamlet did not exceed three hundred souls, of whom all but three or four families were Christians. And these Christians had risen, one day, and had fallen upon the Jews. Scharenstein’s wife was stabbed through the heart, and his son, his brown-eyed little boy, was burned with the house. Upon Scharenstein’s breast, as a reminder of an old historical episode, they hacked a crude sign of a cross; then they let him go, and Scharenstein in some way—no one ever knew how—found his way to this country. When the ship came into the harbour he asked a sailor what that majestic figure was that held aloft the shining light whose rays lit up the wide stretch of the bay. They told him it was the statue of Liberty Enlightening the World. “It is good,” he said. He found work in a sweatshop. An immigrant from a neighbouring hamlet came over later and told the story, but when they came to Scharenstein with sympathy he only laughed. “He is queer,” they said.