I couldn’t take my clothes off. Any minute he’ll come up the steps or knock on the wall. Any minute a telegram will come. It’s twelve o’clock. It’s one. Two! Every time I hear footsteps in the empty street, I am by the window--“Maybe it’s him.” It’s beginning the day. The sun is rising. Oi weh, how can the sun rise and he not here? Mein Gott! He ain’t coming! I sit myself down on the floor by the window with my head on the sill. Everybody is sleeping. I can’t sleep. And I’m so tired. Next day I go, like pushed on, to the shop, glad to be swallowed up by my work. The noise of the knocking machines is like a sleeping-medicine to the cryings inside of me. All day I watched my hands push the waists up and down the machine. I wasn’t with my hands. It was like my breathing stopped and I was sitting inside of myself, waiting for David. The six o’clock whistle blowed. I go out from the shop. I can’t help it--I look for him. “Oi, Gott! Do something for me once! Send him only!” I hold on to the iron fence of the shop, because I feel my heart bleeding away. I can’t go away. The girls all come out from the shops, and the streets get empty and still. But at the end of the block once in a while somebody crosses and goes out from sight. I watch them. I begin counting, “One, two, three--” Underneath my mind is saying, “Maybe it’s him. Maybe the next one!” My eyes shut themselves. I feel the end from everything. “Ah, David! David! Gott! Mein Gott!” I fall on the steps and clinch the stones with the twistings of my body. A terrible cry breaks out from me--“David! David!” My soul is tearing itself out from my body. It is gone. Next day I got news--David opened a doctor’s office uptown. Nothing could hurt me no more. I didn’t hope for nothing. Even if he wanted me back, I couldn’t go to him no more. I was like something dying what wants to be left alone in darkness. But still something inside of me wanted to see for itself how all is dead between us, and I write him: “David Novak: You killed me. You killed my love. Why did you leave me yet living? Why must I yet drag on the deadness from me?” I don’t know why I wrote him. I just wanted to give a look on him. I wanted to fill up my eyes with him before I turned them away forever. I was sitting by the table in the kitchen, wanting to sew, but my hands was lying dead on the table, when the door back of me burst open. “O God! What have I done? Your face is like ashes! You look like you are dying!” David gave a rush in. His hair wasn’t combed, his face wasn’t shaved, his clothes was all wrinkled. My letter he was holding crushed in his hand. “I killed you! I left you! But I didn’t rest a minute since I went away! Heart of mine, forgive me!” He gave a take my hand, and fell down kneeling by me. “Sarale, speak to me!” “False dog! Coward!” cried my father, breaking in on us. “Get up! Get out! Don’t dare touch my child again! May your name and memory be blotted out!”