He considered his future attitude and planned his campaign. He would not appear before her until the following Sabbath; but he would let her hear his voice. From early morn till late at night let her hear his voice—his voice that was so charming and melodious, so masculine. Let it follow her about through all the rooms, into the garden before the house, into the seclusion of her bed. Let it accompany her in her thoughts and sing with her in all her prayers. And always, in case of accidental meeting, his beard would be well combed and his head-covering would sit so well over his high forehead that his beauty would compel her eyes, and the bearing of his body would summon to her the same thoughts that had occurred to the Roman matron. The first day of that week his voice and his reciting sounded very mournful, and on the second and third days it was likewise very sad. And on those days his distant gaze, at their accidental meetings, was full of pity and sorrow. But on the fourth day a change came over his voice. It rang with joy and a zest for life, and when by accident they met he looked at her most ardently, with glad rapture; she stopped and followed him with her eyes, unable to understand the great change. The sadness of his voice and the longing in his glance she had understood, and had explained in divers ways. His own life was surely no happy one; all Israel suffered eternal persecution; her home was a house of mourning. Then how could a person be happy beneath its roof? Her very proximity must inspire sadness. But the rejoicing in his voice and the rapture of his glance she could neither understand nor justify. And all that day his voice disquieted her; at night it weighed still heavier upon her in the lonesomeness of her bed. Why was he so happy? What was chanting so joyously in his heart? “How do his eyes look now?” she asked herself, and grew ashamed at her thoughts, directing them to Rabbi Mayer. She longed for him, hoping that the thirty days would fly by as soon as possible. On the next day and the day following the great joy was with him still. Beruriah’s astonishment likewise continued. Once and again she wished to stop him at one of their accidental meetings and ask the significance of the great change that had come over him. But Beruriah would not ask. Not the wife of Rabbi Mayer. What was this student, after all, to her? Why should she be at all concerned with what was passing in the heart of this strange man? She was neither his mother nor his sister; not even a friend of former years. Did it become Beruriah to be inquisitive? Was Rabbi Mayer’s wife, then, like other women? But she noticed that the stranger had become even handsomer, more powerful, more masculine.