"Tell her."
"As thou wishest."
There was a pause. Presently the woman spoke.
"Wilt thou not bring her to see me? Then she will know that thou hast
no love left for me--"
He flinched as at a stab. After a painful moment he said: "Art thou in
earnest?"
"I am no marriage-jester. Bring her to me--will she not come to see an
invalid? It is a _mitzvah_ (good deed) to visit the sick. It will wipe
out her trespass."
"She shall come."
She came. Sarah stared at her for an instant with poignant curiosity,
then her eyelids drooped to shut out the dazzle of her youth and
freshness. Herzel's wife moved awkwardly and sheepishly. But she was
beautiful--a buxom, comely country girl from a Russian village, with a
swelling bust and a cheek rosy with health and confusion.
Sarah's breast was racked by a thousand needles. But she found breath
at last.
"God bless--thee, Mrs.--Kretznow," she said gaspingly.
She took the girl's hand.
"How good thou art to come and see a sick creature."
"My husband willed it," the new wife said in deprecation. She had a
simple, stupid air that did not seem wholly due to the constraint of
the strange situation.
"Thou wast right to obey. Be good to him, my child. For three years he
waited on me, when I lay helpless. He has suffered much. Be good to
him!"
With an impulsive movement she drew the girl's head down to her and
kissed her on the lips. Then with an anguished cry of "Leave me for
to-day," she jerked the blanket over her face and burst into tears.
She heard the couple move hesitatingly away. The girl's beauty shone
on her through the opaque coverings.
"O God!" she wailed. "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, let me die
now. For the merits of the Patriarchs take me soon, take me soon."
Her vain passionate prayer, muffled by the bedclothes, was wholly
drowned by ear-piercing shrieks from the ward above--screams of agony
mingled with half-articulate accusations of attempted poisoning--the
familiar paroxysm of the palsied woman who clung to life.
The thrill passed again through Sister Margaret. She uplifted her
sweet humid eyes.
"Ah, Christ!" she whispered. "If I could die for her!"
* * * * *