"Torah is light!" said my father, with proud satisfaction, and began to look for the Tikun[109] for the night of Pentecost. "In honor of the holy feast-day!" exclaimed my mother, joyfully, and went back with fresh courage to her cake-making. "I am going to bake Gelle Challeh!"[110] she called to us. Soon the house was filled with the smell of freshly-kneaded dough, saffron, cinnamon and cloves, sugared cheese and melted butter. My younger sister Hannah took no part in what was going forward. She sat by the window over a book, but she read nothing, and her eyes stared anxiously out into the street. Our mother called on her several times for help, but Hannah did not even answer.... The pale face wears a scornful smile ... the delicate lips open, she is about to speak! But she remains silent, and fastens her eyes upon her book. "Lazy thing!" grumbles our mother, "always poring over books! Working-day or holiday, it's all the same to her!" Our father, who rarely interferes in household matters, having found the book and dusted it, lies down to sleep before bathing, to prepare for being up at night. Our mother stops complaining, lest she should wake him. She calls me quietly to her, gives me a few pennies, and tells me to go down-stairs and buy a bit of green, and some colored paper with which to festoon the windows. Heaven knows, I am unwilling enough to leave the room wherein stands a bowl of sweet cream, another of sugared cheese, and where packets of currants and raisins lie all about. At the same time, going to buy, to bargain over, and to pay for greenery and paper, was still more seductive, and away I run. And it turned out to be such a dreadful Pentecost! * * * * * Hannah, my sister, ran away! We had gone to prayers, and my mother had lain down to rest before blessing the lights.... It was then they gave a signal--my mother remembered afterwards hearing a terrible whistle in her sleep. And she left us, and went over to our enemies! And the time she chose was Pentecost, the season of the giving of our Law!... It was then she left us. * * * * * Everything passes away, joy and sorrow, good and evil, and still we go forward on our way to the land where all things are forgotten--or remembered anew. Everything we have lived through lies beneath our feet like stones in a beaten track, like gravestones under which we have buried our friends, good and bad. But I cannot forget Hannah! * * * * * The life she had sought so eagerly spurned her from it, the vision of happiness faded into thin air, the flowers turned to sharp thorns in her grasp! There was no return possible. In her way stood the Law and two graves: her father's grave and her mother's. Where is she? Once every year, on the eve of Pentecost, she shows herself to me again.