Beruriah sat in confusion, indeed full of his voice and his presence, and at times it seemed as if an angel from heaven were addressing her. Only when she was able to give thought to what he had said could she liberate herself from his spell. Her mind grew clearer and with a sigh she rose. And this is what she told her unhappy mother-heart: “It is possible that the world has been made richer, and that such was the purpose of God when he took from me my two children. He has His goal and His aims, and His ways are hidden from our sight. But I have become so poor, so poor....” VIII During the whole of the first day of the new week his voice was scarcely heard, and Beruriah wondered. Had anything happened to him? She fairly longed for his voice. The aged servant, however, brought her the news that the guest, for the most part, paced back and forth in his room. And when he seated himself at his table, he buried his head in his arms and remained thus motionless. And Beruriah said that surely he had encountered a difficult passage in the Torah. Rabbi Mayer, too, was in the habit of acting so when confronted by a perplexing problem, and the student must take after the master. Yet that same evening his voice was heard again, but altogether altered. There was in it nothing of its former joyousness, and nothing of its still earlier sorrow. There was, however, a certain something that made Beruriah listen, pouring unrest into her soul. It was a note of yearning, and a note of entreaty. A sort of petulance, as if from a pampered child, and a kind of supplication, like a beggar at the door. What did his voice wish now to say? What did it mean now? To whom was he now speaking? To God? To his own heart? In what measure was she, Beruriah, here involved? If at first it had been she who sounded in his voice, what did he wish of her now? Was he praying to God in her behalf? What did he ask of God for her? She tossed from side to side upon her bed, and thought how really wondrous was this man. She saw him stand before her in all his beauty, with his sadness and his fervour, and with his eyes in which the colours dissolved; she heard his voice, which penetrated her heart and her very soul; she exiled her thoughts with the ardent prayer that the thirty days should pass as quickly as possible.