"Who told thee it was I?" said Rebecca, after a moment of delicious happiness for both. "I told them not to alarm thee, nor to spoil thy enjoyment of the sermon, because I knew thou wouldst be uneasy and be wanting to leave the synagogue if thou knewest I had fainted." "No one told me thou hadst fainted!" Moshé exclaimed, instantly forgetting his own perturbation. "And yet thou didst guess it!" said Rebecca, a happy little smile dimpling her pale cheek, "and came away after me." Then, her face clouding, "The _Satan Mekatrig_ has tempted us both away from synagogue," she said, "and even when I commence to say _Tehillim_ (Psalms) at home, he interrupts me by sending me my darling husband." Moshé kissed her in acknowledgment of the complimentary termination of a sentence begun with unquestionable gloom. "But what made my Rivkoly faint?" he asked, glad, on reflection, that his wife's misconception obviated the necessity of explanations. "They ought to have opened the window at the back of the women's room." Rebecca shuddered. "God forbid!" she cried. "It wasn't the heat--it was _that_." Her eyes stared a moment at some unseen vision. "What?" cried Moshé, catching the contagion of horror. "He would have come in," she said. "Who would have come in?" he gasped. "The _Satan Mekatrig_," replied his wife. "He was outside, and he glared at me as if I prevented his coming in." A nervous silence followed. Moshé's heart beat painfully. Then he laughed with ghastly merriment. "Thou didst fall asleep from the heat," he said, "and hadst an evil dream." "No, no," protested his wife earnestly. "As sure as I stand here, no! I was looking into my _Chumosh_ (Pentateuch), following the reading of the _Torah_, and all at once I felt something plucking my eyes off my book and turning my head to look through the window immediately behind me. I wondered what _Satan Mekatrig_ was distracting my thoughts from the service. For a long time I resisted, but when the reading ceased for a moment the temptation overcame me and I turned and saw him." "How looked he?" Moshé asked in a whisper that strove in vain not to be one. "Do not ask me," Rebecca replied, with another shudder. "A little crooked demon with red hair, and a fur cap, and a white forehead, and baleful eyes, and a cock's talons for toes." Again Moshé laughed, a strange, hollow laugh. "Little fool!" he said, "I know the man. He is only a brother-Jew--a poor cutter or cigar-maker who laughs at _Yiddishkeit_ (Judaism), because he has no wife like mine to show him the heavenly light. Why, didst thou not see him afterward? But no, thou must have been gone by the time he came inside."