“Don’t be so comically serious, father,” said Daniel, smiling afresh.  “What’s come over you?  What have you to do with love?  One would think you were a romantic young fool on the stage.  It’s all nonsense about love.  I don’t love anybody, least of all Bessie Sugarman, so don’t you go worrying your old head about my affairs.  You get back to that musty book of yours there.  I wonder if you’ve suddenly come across anything about love in that, and don’t forget to use the reading glasses and not your ordinary spectacles, else it’ll be a sheer waste of money.  By the way, mother, remember to go to the Eye Hospital on Saturday to be tested.  I feel sure it’s time you had a pair of specs, too.”

“Don’t I look old enough already?” thought Mrs. Hyams.  But she said, “Very well, Daniel,” and began to clear away his supper.

“That’s the best of being in the fancy,” said Daniel cheerfully.  “There’s no end of articles you can get at trade prices.”

He sat for half an hour turning over the evening paper, then went to bed.  Mr. and Mrs. Hyams’s eyes sought each other involuntarily but they said nothing.  Mrs. Hyams fried a piece of Wurst for Miriam’s supper and put it into the oven to keep hot, then she sat down opposite Mendel to stitch on a strip of fur, which had got unripped on one of Miriam’s jackets.  The fire burnt briskly, little flames leaped up with a crackling sound, the clock ticked quietly.

Beenah threaded her needle at the first attempt.

“I can still see without spectacles,” she thought bitterly.  But she said nothing.

Mendel looked up furtively at her several times from his book.  The meagreness of her parchment flesh, the thickening mesh of wrinkles, the snow-white hair struck him with almost novel force.  But he said nothing.  Beenah patiently drew her needle through and through the fur, ever and anon glancing at Mendel’s worn spectacled face, the eyes deep in the sockets, the forehead that was bent over the folio furrowed painfully beneath the black Koppel, the complexion sickly.  A lump seemed to be rising in her throat.  She bent determinedly over her sewing, then suddenly looked up again.  This time their eyes met.  They did not droop them; a strange subtle flash seemed to pass from soul to soul.  They gazed at each other, trembling on the brink of tears.

“Beenah.”  The voice was thick with suppressed sobs.

“Yes, Mendel.”

“Thou hast heard?”

“Yes, Mendel.”

“He says he loves her not.”

“So he says.”

“It is lies, Beenah.”

“But wherefore should he lie?”

“Thou askest with thy mouth, not thy heart.  Thou knowest that he wishes us not to think that he remains single for our sake.  All his money goes to keep up this house we live in.  It is the law of Moses.  Sawest thou not his face when I spake of Sugarman’s daughter?”

Beenah rocked herself to and fro, crying:  “My poor Daniel, my poor lamb!  Wait a little.  I shall die soon.  The All-High is merciful.  Wait a little.”