The Maccabaean

(Concluded.)

HOW did it happen? Had it happened, or was she merely dreaming? Teibele asked herself these questions as she sat by the window, her pretty head leaning on her hand, looking out but seeing nothing. Her brain was busy sorting and classifying events. It was just two weeks after her wedding—no, it could not be more; by actual count on the slender fingers, the sum is just fourteen, an even number too. “Before I was only betrothed,” she solilo- quished— “but now I am married, I know I am, to—Tuviah,—to Tuviah!” she emphasized the last word as if to assure herself that it was to Tuviah, and not to any one else. How could she doubt it? It was not Shmarjah! All that was left of Shmarjah now was a heap of broken fancies and shattered recollections, all huddled together in a corner of her heart and ccvered up from the sight of her own inner eye. She did not like to be confronted with the ghosts of a dead past. “Nay, nay, it is not a dream,” ecboed her heart; just then she moved her hand away from under her chin, there was a flash of something like gold, yes, it was the gold of the band ring which she wore on the first finger of her right hand. The marriage ring! Teibele pressed the shiny band between the fingers of her left hand. No, it did not fade away under her touch, it was real metal, not the gossamer of fancy.. What a weight it was—it hurt her finger, her flesh seemed to wince under its touch. She made a movement as if to pull the ring off her finger, but her hands seemed to have become paralyzed; she could not move them.

How did it happen? She scarcely knew. She herself played but a passive part in all that had taken place. It was “Tei-

beie, my child, do this,” and “Teibele, my life, do that.” All Treibele had to do was only to obey her mother, and when one day her mother brought out a white dress of soft silk, with many, many little frills, and told Teibele to help herself into it, she obeyed mechanically. Teibele remembered that on that day, from early morning, there was great commotion in their house. New, unaccustomed odors issued from the kitchen, and women with faces hot and excited, and sleeves.rolled up, kept running in and out. And then—she had but a dim recollection of what followed. Her memory retained a few odd fragments which she vainly tried to construct into a whole. Out of the confusion and chaos she here and there distinguished a familiar face, or caught a well-known sound. Voices, faces—all seemed confused in one mass. She remembered a house-surely their house—filled with men and women, all attired shabbosdig; the women with extra white kerchiefs in their hands, which they often laid against their eyes, the while their shoulders rose and fell, rose and fell, as if in an effort to restrain their emotion. This lasted for a little while, then one of the women—from a remote part of the house, it seemed to Teibele—broke out in loud weeping. Instantly all the other women in the house joined her. There was a shuflling of feet and a swish of silken gowns, a murmuring and whispering from one end of the room to the other. All was noise and confusion; women wept and smiled through their tears.. And higher then all the noises and sounds there now rose the trembling, unsteady notes of a fiddie. A hush fell on everybody. “The bridegroom comes! Make way for the bridegroom!” There was a sudden move-