I only waited till the child should be well. And when it got better, I hadn't the heart to tell you I wanted to go away, whither my eyes should take me. I was afraid you would say you wouldn't allow it, and that I should not be able to act against your will. So I kept everything to myself, ate my heart out in silence. But the day before yesterday, when you brought home a pound of bread, and divided it between me and the child, and said, you had eaten at our neighbor's, and I saw in your face, which turned all colors--because you cannot tell a lie--that you were fooling me, that you hadn't had a bite, then I felt how I was sinning against you. Eating the bread, I felt as if it were your flesh, and afterward, drinking a glass of tea, as if it were your blood. My eyes opened, and I saw, for the first time, what a sinner in Israel I was. And yet I was afraid to speak out. I ran away without your knowing. I pawned my outer cloak and prayer-scarf to Yechiel the money-lender--but don't, for the love of heaven, let anyone know--and paid for my journey. And if I should be in need, Jews are charitable and will not let me fall dead in the street; and I have made a vow that later on, when His Name shall have had mercy, and I have earned something, to give it in charity, not only what I got, but more, too, if God so please. You must understand, my precious Hannah, how hard and bitter it is for me to go away. When our dear only child was born, it never occurred to me that I should have to leave it fatherless, even for a time. The night I left I must have stood over your bed an hour by the clock. You were asleep. And I saw in the moonlight, for the first time, what you, poor thing, have come to look like; and that the child was as yellow as wax. My heart choked me for terror and pity--I nearly burst out crying, and I left the room half-dead. I knocked at the baker's and bought a loaf, stole back into the house and left it with you, and stood and looked at you a little while longer, and it was all I could do to drag myself away. What more am I to tell you? A man can go through the suffering of a hundred years in one minute.