After all, Mendel was a helpless male, all alone in a house. He probably did not know the first thing about housekeeping and would have starved or been buried in dirt if he had not appealed to somebody to help him. And Rifke was just the type to take advantage of a defenceless man in such a predicament. She doubtless opened her eyes at him like two coal-scuttles, and pursed her lips--she had a way of doing it which gave the women of the neighborhood heart failure. And Mendel must have been grateful and kind to her for her assistance, and she must have mistaken his attitude for something else. She always misunderstood kindness from men. So that’s how Mendel managed to clean the house so well! And that’s why work was pleasure to him! Judging by the amount and quality of the work Rifke was doing for him, their affection for each other must have developed to an alarming degree. Zelde visualized the hateful scenes of faithlessness in which Mendel probably danced fawningly about Rifke, the fifty-three-year-old “vamp,” who cleaned dishes and washed clothes for him as a reward. She must have nudged him with her elbow while she boiled the wash and said invitingly, “Mendel, dear, why are you blind to beauty?” And Mendel, edging closer, must have answered, “What is beauty? Wine! The older it gets, the rarer it is!” Then pressing his cheek against hers, he undoubtedly added, with tenderness, “You’re so fat! It’s a pleasure to hold you around! What is a man? Dynamite. What is a woman? A burning match. What is passion? The explosion!” “Stop it! Your whiskers tickle me,” she probably replied with a coquettish laugh, and slapped him playfully over the hands with a rinsed shirt. But she was only jesting, and was perhaps ecstatic with joy when Mendel courageously kissed her on the cheek despite her protests, and exclaimed, “What is a kiss? A smack for which you turn the other cheek!” And she probably turned it. Then Rifke amorously rested her head on his chest and looked up with those devilish eyes of hers, and, linking her plump arms about his neck, she whispered, “Love me, Mendel, love me! I am yours!” And Mendel, planting his feet more solidly to bear her weight, and carried away by the flames of desire, must have gripped her in his passionate embrace and murmured in a throaty voice, “What is love? A broom. It sweeps you away!” “What’s the matter with you, Zelde?” cried Marcus, the tailor, biting the thread from a seam. “You stitched the skirt to a sleeve and you’re sewing up the neck of the waist! “You look white like a ghost!” Zelde drew herself up, as out of a lethargy. “Eh! W--where am I? Oh!” And her face sank into her palms. Instantly there was a tumult in the shop. A startled group of frightened men and women gathered about her. But Zelde regained her self-control without aid, and pale and faint though she was, she smiled weakly to reassure them all.