essness, not even this shrivelled ancient who was
meditating on her latter end. Suddenly he became aware of a shadow
darkening the doorway. At the same instant the fire leapt back into
his grandmother's glasses. Instinctively, almost before he turned his
head, he knew it was the hero of the romance.

Yossel Mandelstein looked even less of a hero than the artist had
remembered. There had been something wistful and pathetic in the
hunchback's expression, some hint of inner eager fire, but this--if he
had not merely imagined it--seemed to have died of age and
hopelessness. He used crutches, too, to help himself along with, so
that he seemed less the hunchback of yore than the conventional
contortion of time, and but for the familiar earlocks pendent on
either side of the fur cap, but for the great hooked nose and the
small chin hidden in the big beard, the artist might have doubted if
this was indeed the Yossel he had sometimes mocked at in the crude
cruelty of boyhood.

Yossel, propped on his crutches, was pulling out a mouldering
black-covered book from under his greasy caftan. 'I have brought you
back your _Chovoth Halvovoth_,' he said.

In the vivid presence of the actual romance the artist could not
suppress the smile he had kept back at the mere shadowy recital. In
Rome he himself had not infrequently called on young ladies by way of
returning books to them. It was true that the books he returned were
not Hebrew treatises, but he smiled again to think that the name of
Yossel's volume signified 'the duties of the heart.' The _Bube_ Yenta
received the book with thanks, and a moment of embarrassment ensued,
only slightly mitigated by the offer of the snuffbox. Yossel took a
pinch, but his eyes seemed roving in amaze, less over the stranger
than over the bespread table, as though he might unaccountably have
overlooked some sacred festival. That two are company and three none
seemed at this point a proverb to be heeded, and without waiting to
renew the hero's acquaintance, the artist escaped from the idyllic
cottage. Let the lover profit by the pastry for which he himself was
too old.

So the gossips spoke the truth, he thought, his amusement not
unblended with a touch of his mother's indignation. Surely, if his
grandmother wished to cultivate a grand passion, she might have chosen
a more sightly object of devotion. Not that there was much to be said
for Yossel's taste either. When after seventy-five years of celibac