lustfully and when I found that her florid skin was almost spotless, her lips fresh, and her black hair without a hint of gray, I was glad. Presently, while removing my plate, she threw the trembling bulk of her great, firm bust under my very eyes. I felt disturbed. "Some morning when we are alone," I said to myself, "I shall kiss those red lips of hers."

From that moment on she was my quarry

As her husband worked in a sweatshop, while I peddled, he usually got up at least an hour before me. And it was considered perfectly natural that Mrs.

Levinsky should be hovering about the kitchen while I was sleeping or lying awake on the kitchen lounge. Also, that after her husband left for the day I should go around half-naked, washing and dressing myself, in the same crowded little room in which she was then doing her work, as scantily clad as I was and with the sleeves of her flimsy blouse rolled up to her armpits.

I had never noticed these things before, but on the morning following the above supper I did. As I opened my eyes and saw her bare, fleshy arms held out toward the little kerosene-stove I thought of my resolve to kiss her

She was humming something in a very low voice. To let her know that I was awake I stretched myself and yawned audibly. Her voice rose. It was a song from a well-known Jewish play she was singing

"Good mornings Mrs. Levinsky," I greeted her, in a familiar tone which she now heard for the first time from me. "You seem to be in good spirits this morning."

She was evidently taken aback. I was the last man in the world she would have expected to address a remark of this kind to her

"How can you see it?" she asked, with a side-glance at me

"Have I no ears? Don't I hear your beautiful singing?"

"Beautiful singing!" she said, without looking at me

After a considerable pause I said, awkwardly, "You know, Mrs. Levinsky, I dreamed of you last night!"

"Did you?"

"Aren't you interested to know something more about it?" "I dreamed of telling you that you are a good-looking lady," I pursued, with fast-beating heart

"What has got into that fellow?" she asked of the kerosene-stove. "He is a greenhorn no longer, as true as I am alive." "You won't deny you are good-looking, will you?"

"What is that to you?" And again addressing herself to the kerosene-stove: "What do you think of that fellow? A pious Talmudist indeed! Strike me blind if I ever saw one like that." And she uttered a gobble-like chuckle

I saw encouragement in her manner. I went on to talk of her songs and the Jewish theater, a topic for which I knew her to have a singular weakness.

The upshot was that I soon had her telling me of a play she had recently seen. As she spoke, it was inevitable that she should come up close to the lounge. As she did so, her fingers touched my quilt, her bare, sturdy arms paralyzing my attention. The temptation to grasp them was tightening its grip on me. I decided to begin by taking hold of her hand. I warned myself that it must be done gently, with romance in my touch. "I shall just caress her hand," I decided, not hearing a word of what she was saving

I brought my hand close to hers. My heart beat violently. I was just about to touch her fingers, but I let the opportunity pass. I turned the conversation on her husband, on his devotion to her, on their wedding. She mocked my questions, but answered them all the same

"He must have been awfully in love with you," I said

"What business is that of yours? Where did you learn to ask such questions? At the synagogue? Of course he loved me! What would you have? That he should have hated me? Why did he marry me, then? Of course he was in love with me! Else I would not have married him, would I? Are you satisfied now?" She boasted of the rich and well-connected suitors she had rejected

I felt that I had side-tracked my flirtation. Touching her hand would have been out of place now

A few minutes later, when I was saying my morning prayers, I carefully kept my eyes away from her lest I should meet her sneering glance.

When I had finished my devotions and had put my phylacteries into their little bag I sat down to breakfast. "I don't like this woman at all," I said to myself, looking at her. "In fact, I abhor her. Why, then, am I so crazy to carry on with her?" It was the same question that I had once asked myself concerning my contradictory feelings for Red Esther, but my knowledge of life had grown considerably since then

In those days I had made the discovery that there were "kisses prompted by affection and kisses prompted by Satan." I now added that even love of the flesh might be of two distinct kinds: "There is love of body and soul, and there is a kind of love that is of the body only," I theorized. "There is love and there is lust."

I thought of my feeling for Matilda. That certainly was love

Various details of my relations with Matilda came back to me during these days

One afternoon, as I was brooding over these recollections, while passively awaiting customers at my cart, I conjured up that night scene when she sat on the great green sofa and I went into ecstasies speaking of my prospective studies for admission to a Russian university. I recalled how she had been irritated with me for talking too loud and how, calling me "Talmud student," or ninny, she had abruptly left the room. I had thought of the scene a hundred times before, but now a new interpretation of it flashed through my mind. It all seemed so obvious. I certainly had been a ninny, an idiot. I burst into a sarcastic titter at Matilda's expense and my own

"Of course I was a ninny," I scoffed at myself again and again

I saw Matilda from a new angle. It was as if she had suddenly slipped off her pedestal. Instead of lamenting my fallen idol, however, I gloated over her fall. And, instead of growing cold to her, I felt that she was nearer to me than ever, nearer and dearer

CHAPTER II ONE morning, after breakfast, when I was about to leave the house and Mrs.

Levinsky was detaining me, trying to exact a promise that I should get somebody to share the lounge with me, I said: "I'll see about it. I must be going. Good-by!" At this I took her hand, ostensibly in farewell

"Good-by," she said, coloring and trying to free herself

"Good-by," I repeated, shaking her hand gently and smiling upon her

She wrenched out her hand. I took hold of her chin, but she shook it free

"Don't," she said, shyly, turning away

"What's the matter?" I said, gaily.

She faced about again. "I'll tell you what the matter is," she said. "If you do that again you will have to move. If you think I am one of those landladies--you know the kind I mean--you are mistaken."

She uttered it in calm, rather amicable accents. So I replied: "Why, why, of course I don't! Indeed you are the most respectable and the most sweet-looking woman in the world!"

I stepped up close to ner and reached out my hand to seize hold of her bare arm

"None of that, mister!" she flared up, drawing back. "Keep your hands where they belong. If you try that again I'll break every bone in your body. May both my hands be paralyzed if I don't!"

"'S-sh," I implored. Which only added fuel to her rage

"'S-sh nothing! I'll call in all the neighbors of the house and tell them the kind of pious man you are. Saying his prayers three times a day, indeed!"

I sneaked out of the house like a thief. I was wretched all day, wondering how I should come to supper in the evening. I wondered whether she was going to deliver me over to the jealous wrath of her husband. I should have willingly forfeited my trunk and settled in another place, but Mrs. Levinsky had an approximate knowledge of the places where I was likely to do business and there was the danger of a scene from her. Maximum Max's theory did not seem to count for much. But then he had said that one must know "how to go about it." Perhaps I had been too hasty.

Late in the afternoon of that day Mrs. Levinsky came to see me. Pretending to be passing along on some errand, she paused in front of my cart, accosting me pleasantly

"I'll bet you are angry with me," she said, smiling broadly

"I am not angry at all," I answered, with feigned moroseness. "But you certainly have a tongue. Whew! And, well, you can't take a joke."

"I did not mean to hurt your feelings, Mr. Levinsky. May my luck be as good as is my friendship for you. I certainly wish you no evil. May God give me all the things I wish you. I just want you to