There is a silence. "Sarah'le, we are not doing our duty." "In what respect?" "In respect to her. How old were you when you married?" "I was younger than she is." "Well?" "Well--what?" At that moment there were two raps at the shutter. Mother sprang out of bed; in one minute she had torn down the string by which the shutter was held to, and thrown open the window, which had long been without a fastening. "What is it?" she called into the street. "Rebekah Zeinwill is dead!" Mother left the window. "Blessed be the righteous Judge!" said my father. "To die is nothing." "Blessed be the righteous Judge!" said my mother. "We were just talking about her." * * * * * I was very restless in those days. I don't know myself what ailed me. Sometimes I would lie awake all night. Hammers beat in my temples, and my heart pained me as though filled with fear, or else with a longing after something for which it had no name. At other times it grew so warm and tender, I could have taken everything and everyone round me in my arms and kissed them and hugged them. Only whom? The little brothers wouldn't let me--even the five-year old Yochanan butted and screamed; he wouldn't play with a girl. My mother, besides my being afraid of her, was always cross and overdriven; my father--growing from bad to worse. In a short time he was as gray as a pigeon, his face shrivelled like parchment, and his eyes had such a helpless, pleading stare, it needed only one glance at them to send me out of the room crying. Then I used to think of Beril. I could have told him everything, I could have hugged and kissed him. Now he lay in the cold earth, and I cried more bitterly than ever. Indeed, the tears often came without any reason at all. Sometimes I would be looking out of the window into the yard and see the moon swimming nearer and nearer to the whitewashed fence opposite, and not able to swim over it. And I would be seized with pity for the moon and feel a sudden contraction of the heart, and the tears flowed and flowed. Other days I was listless. I hung round with no energy and a pale face with drooping eyelids. There was a rushing in my ears, my head was heavy, and life seemed so little worth living, it would be best to die. At these times I envied Beril his lot. He lay in the earth, where it is quiet. And I often dreamt that I was dead; that I lay in the grave, or else that I was flying about in heaven in a shift with my hair loose, and that I looked down to see what people were about on the earth.