He soon made her forget her fears. He began to ask her questions about the people in Gnesen, about herself, but she would not talk about herself. She wanted him to tell her about Berlin, of which she had heard so much. She sighed. She was tired of Gnesen and the people here. There was nothing new in Gnesen. The same gloom day after day, week after week, year after year. Ah, for a glimpse of Berlin! He made attempts to console her. Her naiveté, her ignorance of the world, her simplicity, her artlessness, her evident truthfulness charmed him. She had never been outside the little town, and she was in her eighteenth year. She entertained strange notions of what a large city was like, and wished she could go to one—she would go anywhere to escape the tedium of Gnesen. They were now seated in the screening shade of a clump of willows on one side and on the other were the bushy shrubs through which one caught only intermittent glimpses of the flowing stream below. Now and then were heard the quaint songs of the peasant women in the fields—Polish folk songs—the piping of a swineherd in the distance, the barking of a dog, the shrill drilling sound of the locust. He sat on the ground opposite Miriam, listening to her wistfully, catching the enchanting melodies around him, and looking, with narrowed eyes, at the beautiful maiden before him. There was an exhaling purity about her. Sheltered by her mother’s rigorous virtue she was like a soft-colored wild flower surrounded by high woods, never scorched by the burning rays of the sun, never harassed by gusts of cold winds. As he looked at her appealing dark-blue eyes with those exquisite long black eyelashes, her rich black hair combed straight back from her low, square forehead, and the faintest dimple in her chin, there was a strange sentiment in his heart. He was conscious of a desire to rest his hands upon her bowed head—barely touching it—as did the Jews of old, and murmur a prayer and a blessing that God may guard her sweet purity. “You ought to be glad to be away from large cities,” he endeavored to cheer her. “Here you have treasures Berlin could never give you.” He halted. A finch dropped a few sweet notes and sailed away, and then the chattering crickets accentuated the silence around them. “Ah! you don’t understand—you don’t understand—” she was saying, sadness spreading over her face.