hat no one
could say why he should not get up and dress himself, and he himself
continued to speak of some future time when he would do so; but there
he was, lying in his bed, and Nina told herself that in all probability
she would never see him about the house again. For herself, she was
becoming painfully anxious that some day should be fixed for her
marriage. She knew that she was, herself, ignorant in such matters;
and she knew also that there was no woman near her from whom she could
seek counsel. Were she to go to some matron of the neighbourhood, her
neighbour would only rebuke her, because she loved a Jew. She had
boldly told her relatives of her love, and by doing so had shut herself
out from all assistance from them. From even her father she could get
no sympathy; though with him her engagement had become so far a thing
sanctioned, that he had ceased to speak of it in words of reproach.
But when was it to be? She had more than once made up her mind that
she would ask her lover, but her courage had never as yet mounted high
enough in his presence to allow her to do so. When he was with her,
their conversation always took such a turn that before she left him she
was happy enough if she could only draw from him an assurance that he
was not forgetting to love her. Of any final time for her marriage he
never said a word. In the mean time she and her father might starve!
They could not live on the price of a necklace for ever. She had not
made up her mind--she never could make up her mind--as to what might be
best for her father when she should be married; but she had made up her
mind that when that happy time should come, she would simply obey her
husband. He would tell her what would be best for her father. But in
the mean time there was no word of her marriage; and now she had been
ten days in the Kleinseite without once having had so much as a message
from her lover. How was it possible that she should continue to live in
such a condition as this?

She was sitting one morning very forlorn in the big parlour, looking
out upon the birds who were pecking among the dust in the courtyard
below, when her eye just caught the drapery of the dress of some woman
who had entered the arched gateway. Nina, from her place by the window,
could see out through the arch, and no one therefore could come through
their gate while she was at her seat without passing under her eye; but
on this occasion the birds had distracted her at