"Tell me, I beg of you, what is the good of the stories you write? I don't mean to _you_," he amended himself. "Heaven forbid! A Jew must earn a living, if he has to suck it out of the wall--that is not what I mean--what will a Jew not do for a living? I am riding in the post-chaise, and not in an 'opportunity,'[2] because I could not hear of one. Heaven knows whether I'm not sitting on Shatnez.[3] I mean the people--what is the good of the stories to _them?_ What is the object of them? What do they put into story books?" Then, answering himself: "I guess it's just a question of women's fashions, like crinolines!" "And you," I ask, "have never dipped into a story-book?" "I can tell _you_: I do know a _little_ about them, as much as that." And he measured off a small piece of his finger, but it was dark in the chaise. "Did they interest you?" "_Me?_ Heaven forbid! It was all through my wife! This, you see, is how it happened: It must be five or six years ago--six--a year after the wedding, we were still boarding with my father--when my wife grew poorly. Not that she was ill; she went about as usual, but she was not up to the mark. "One day I asked her what was wrong. "But, really--" he caught himself up. "I don't know why I should bother you with all this." "Please, go on!" My neighbor laughed. "Is straw wanted in Egypt? Do you want _my_ stories, when you can invent your own?" "Do, please, go on!" "Apparently, you write fiction for other people and want truth for yourself?" It does not occur to him that one might wish to write the truth. "Well," he said, "so be it!" * * * * * "Well," repeated my neighbor, "there's nothing to be ashamed of. We had a room to ourselves, I was a young man then, more given to that sort of thing--and I asked her what was the matter. She burst out crying! "I felt very sorry for her. Besides being my wife, she was an orphan, away from her home, and altogether much to be pitied." "Why so much to be pitied?" I wonder. "You see, my mother, peace be upon her, died about two years before the marriage, and my father, peace be upon him, did not marry again. "My mother, may her merits protect us, was a good woman, and my father could not forget her. Well, a woman alone in the house! My father, peace be upon him, had no time to spare--he was away nearly the whole week in the villages--he traded in all sorts of things, whatever you please--eggs, butter, rags, hogs' bristles, linen." "And you?" "I sat in the house-of-study and learned. Well, I reflected, a woman gets frightened all by herself; but why cry? No, she said, she was dull. Dull? What was that?