“Never mind! Your father knows what I mean! _She_ did it! Rifke! The janitor’s wife! I know her, all right. She made eyes to Mister Mendel Marantz lots of times! She’s older from me by four years, but she paints up like a sign and makes her hair Buster Brown and thinks the men die for her. Ask your father. He knows!” Mendel sat dumbfounded. His eyes opened like mouths. “Don’t make believe you’re innocent. I know you men too good,” Zelde broke out violently. “I slave like a dog and that dirty old--” Tears of rage stifled her. But with a swift change of tone she added, her finger shaking under Mendel’s nose, “Mister Marantz, remember, you’ll be sorry for this.” And she walked out of the room. Mendel was sorry for her. He turned a puzzled face to Sarah. “When the house was upside down she said I made her crazy. Now when it’s fixed up she tries to make me crazy! What’s a wife? An epidemic. If it don’t break out here, it breaks out there!” The next day Zelde fidgeted at her work. She was prompted to fling it aside, rush home, and catch them together--Mendel and Rifke--and pull out the old vixen’s hair and scratch out her eyes. But she bided her time. Mendel was, no doubt, expecting a surprise attack and perhaps had warned his paramour to stay away. Zelde decided to be wily. She would make believe that she had forgotten and forgiven. But how could she? That night, on the landing of the fourth floor, she met Rifke coming down from the fifth. There were only two tenants on the fifth floor--Mrs. Peril Tzvack, a widow who hated Rifke and would never let her into her house, and Mendel Marantz. From which of the two was Rifke coming? As Zelde entered her home the same neatness, the same cleanliness and smartness stung her sight. In fact, she herself could not have done better. To be honest--not even as good. The house was a mirror of spotlessness. It was so obviously the accomplishment of the wicked woman she had met on the stairs that Zelde spent a tortured and sleepless night. She went to work the next morning with a splitting headache, and mists swam before her eyes as she tried to sew. Weird thoughts revolved in her mind. If it were only a question of Mendel, she would not hesitate a moment to leave him forever. But the children! A daughter of marriageable age and the tiny ones! What would people say? And even Mendel. True, there was no excuse--absolutely none--for his abominable treachery. She would never forgive him! Still, Rifke, that superannuated flirt, was the kind of woman that could turn any man’s head! With that double chin of hers and the shaved neck and a dimple like a funnel in her cheek! That’s what the men liked!