After Albert and the count had left Miriam threw her cashmere shawl over her head and took a long walk, to the very end of the town. She was not thinking of the stranger. She was not thinking of anything. Only her head was thumping and she was restless. During Albert’s next visit Miriam sat in the adjoining room and drank in every word, every syllable. She loved to listen to his voice, to his pure German, and frequently blushed at the comical attempts of her father to make his patois sound Germanic. She hoped the young man would come again. Then the miracle happened. The young man called when her father was away and he handed her that note. She cherished the scrap of paper and secretly read it over again and again. She did not hesitate about going to meet him but she trembled with fear. In her innocence the thought that she was running any risk never occurred to her until she had reached the meeting place. On her departure from their first secret meeting she readily agreed to come the following day. She wanted to hear more of the great city where the streets were paved and lit by lamps at night. She naively asked him what street he lived on and when he told her she asked him to put the address on a piece of paper. Then she made a new discovery; the houses in Berlin were numbered! In Gnesen the houses needed no numbers. One knew the occupants of all the houses and instead of numbers, there were little descriptive signs over the doors, indicating what each owner must furnish in case of fire. The picture of a ladder was above the door of one house, that of an axe over another, and there were sketches—not very graphic—of long hooks and pails and besoms, and, in fact, of all the instruments of the Gnesen fire brigade. During one of their clandestine meetings Albert remained seated on the ground, his hands around his knee, staring at her as if she were a work of art which aroused his innermost admiration. Tears of ecstasy were in his eyes as he continued looking at her in silence. The past three years Albert had learned considerably about the lure of sex—sensuality was no longer an unsolved mystery to him—but though Miriam drew him toward her with a thousand invisible chains he was conscious of an inner fear—the fear of touching a sacred shrine—whenever he touched her cashmere shawl or passed his hand, ever so lightly, over her sleeves, or when he clasped her hand in parting. Miriam looked up at him and for a moment let her eyes rest upon his sensitive face. She did not understand the meaning of the mist in his eyes but she was conscious of an overwhelming desire to touch him, to let her hand rest upon his.