live in the same house with you."

"Don't be tearing my heart to pieces," she said. "It is torn badly enough as it is. Do as I say, Levinsky." "Don't you want to see me at all?" "Oh, it's cruel of you to ask questions like that. You have no heart, Levinsky. It's just because I am crazy to see you that you have got to move."

"Don't you want me even to call at your house?" I asked, with an ironical smile, as though I did not take the matter seriously

"Well, that would look strange. Call sometimes, not often, though, and never when Margolis is out."

"Oh, I shall commit suicide," I snarled

"Oh, well. It isn't as bad as all that."

"I will. I certainly will," I said, knowing that I was talking nonsense

"Don't torment me, Levinsky. Don't sprinkle salt over my wound. Take pity on me. Do as I wish and let the tooth be pulled out with as little pain as possible."

I accompanied her down the avenue as far as Houston Street, where she insisted upon our parting. Before we did, however, she indulged in another outburst of funereal oratory, bewailing her happiness as she would a dead child. It was apparently not easy for her to take leave of me, but her purpose to make our romance a thing of the past and to have me move to other lodgings remained unshaken

"This is the last time I shall ever speak to you of my love, Levinsky," she said. "I must tear it out of my heart, even if I have to tear out a piece of my heart along with it. Such is my fate. Good-by, Levinsky. Good luck to you. Be good. Be good. Be good. Remember you have a good head. Waste no time. Study as much as you can. God grant you luck in your business, but try to find time for your books, too. You must become a great man. Do you promise me to read and study a lot?"

"I do. I do. But I won't move out. I can't live without you. We belong to each other, and all you say is nothing but a woman's whim. It's all bosh," I concluded, with an air of masculine superiority. "I won't move out."

"You shall, dearest. Good-by. Good-by."

She broke into a fit of sobbing, but checked it, shook my hand vehemently and hastened away

[note: Yom Kippur] Day of Atonement; figuratively, a day of anguish and tears

CHAPTER XIX I HOPED she would yield, but she did not. I found myself in the grip of an iron will and I did as I was bidden

When I set out in quest of a furnished room I instinctively betook myself to the neighborhood of Stuyvesant Park. That park had acquired a melancholy fascination for me. As though to make amends for my agonies, I determined to move into a good, spacious room, even if I had to pay three or four times as much as I had been paying at the Margolises'. I found a sunny front room with two windows in an old brown-stone house on East Nineteenth Street, between Second Avenue and First, a short distance from the little park and near an Elevated station. The curtains, the carpet, the huge, soft arm-chair, and the lounge struck me as decidedly "aristocratic." To cap the climax of comfort and "swellness," the landlady--a gray little German-American--had, at my request, a bookcase placed between the mantelpiece and one of the windows. It was a "regular" bookcase, doors and all, not a mere "what-not," and the sight of it swelled my breast

"I shall forget all my troubles here," I thought. "I am going to buy a complete set of Spencer and some other books. Won't the bookcase look fine! I shall read, read, read."

When I reported to Dora that I was ready to move, her face clouded

"You seem to be glad to," she said, with venom, dropping her eyes

"Glad? Glad? Why, I am not going to move, then. May I stay here, darling mine? May I?"

"Are you really sorry you have to move?" she asked, fixing a loving glance at me. "Do you really love me?"

There were tears in her eyes. I attempted to come close to her, to kiss her, but she held me back

"No, dearest," she said, shaking her head. "Move out to-morrow, will you? Let's be done with it."

"And what will Max say?" I asked, sardonically. Will nothing seem strange to him nothing at all?"

"Never mind that."

She never mentioned Max to me now, not even by pronoun

"Then you must know him to be an idiot." Now I hated Max with all my heart.

"Don't," she implored

"Oh, I see. He's dear to you now," I laughed

"Have a heart, Levinsky. Have a heart. Must you keep shedding my blood? Have you no pity at all?"

"But it is all so ridiculous. It will look strange," I argued, seriously.

"He is bound to get suspicious."

"I have thought it all out. Don't be uneasy. I'll say we had a quarrel over your board bill."

"A nice dodge, indeed! It may fool Dannie, not him."

"Leave it all to me. Better tell me what sort of lodgings you have got. Is it a decent room? Plenty of air and sunshine? But, no. Don't tell me anything. I mustn't know." I sneered

She was absorbed in thought, flushed, nervous.

Presently she said, with an effect of speaking to herself: "It's sweet to suffer for what is right."

I moved out according to her program. I came home at io the first evening.

My double room, with its great arm-chair, carpets, bookcase, imposing lace curtains, and the genteel silence of the street outside, was a prison to me.

I attempted to read, but there was a lump in my throat and the lines swam before me

I went out, roamed about the streets, dropped in at a Hungarian café, took another ramble, and returned to my room

I tossed about on my great double bed. I sat up in front of one of my two windows, gazing at a street-lamp. It was not solely Dora, but also Lucy and Dannie that I missed. Only the image of Max now aroused hostile feelings in me

Max called at my shop the very next day. The sight of him cut me to the quick. I received him in morose silence

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" he inquired, with pained amazement.

"What did you two quarrel about?"

I made no answer. His presence oppressed me. My surly reticence was no mere acting. But I knew that he misinterpreted it into grim resentment of Dora's sally, as though I said, "Your wife's conduct had better be left undiscussed."

"What nonsense! She charged you too much, did she? Is that the way it all began? Did she insult you? Well, women-folk are liable to flare up, you know. Tell me all about it. I'll straighten it out between you. The children miss you awfully. Come, don't be a fool, Levinsky. Who ever took the words of a woman seriously? What did she say that you should take it so hard?"

"You had better ask her," I replied, with a well-acted frown

"Ask her! She gets wild when I do. I never saw her so wild. She thinks you insulted her first. Well, she is a woman, but you aren't one, are you? Come to the house this evening, will you?"

"That's out of the question."

"Then meet me somewhere else. I want to have a talk with you. It's all so foolish." I pleaded important other engagements, but he insisted that I should meet him later in the evening, and I had to make the appointment. I promised to be at a Canal Street café on condition that he did not mention the disagreeable episode nor offer to effect a reconciliation between Dora and myself

"You're a tough customer. As tough as Dora," he said

When I came to the café, at about 11, I found him waiting for me. He kept his promise about avoiding the subject of Dora, but he talked of women, which jarred on me inordinately now. His lecherous fibs and philosophy made him literally unbearable to me. To turn the conversation I talked shop, and this bored him.

About a week later he called on me again. He informed me that Dora had taken a new apartment up in Harlem, where the rooms were even more modern and cheaper than on Clinton Street

"I wouldn't mind staying where we are," he observed. "But you know how women are. Everybody is moving up-town, so she must move, too."

My face hardened, as if to say: "Why will you speak of your wife?