not sitting on Shatnez.[3] I mean the people—what is the good of the stories to them? What is the object of them? What do they put into story books?" Then, answering himself: "I guess it's just a question of women's fashions, like crinolines!"

"And you," I ask, "have never dipped into a story-book?"

"I can tell you: I do know a little about them, as much as that."

And he measured off a small piece of his finger, but it was dark in the chaise.

"Did they interest you?"

"Me? Heaven forbid! It was all through my wife! This, you see, is how it happened: It must be five or six years ago—six—a year after the wedding, we were still boarding with my father—when my wife grew poorly. Not that she was ill; she went about as usual, but she was not up to the mark.

"One day I asked her what was wrong.

"But, really—" he caught himself up. "I don't know why I should bother you with all this."

"Please, go on!"

My neighbor laughed.

"Is straw wanted in Egypt? Do you want my stories, when you can invent your own?"

"Do, please, go on!"

"Apparently, you write fiction for other people and want truth for yourself?"

It does not occur to him that one might wish to write the truth.

"Well," he said, "so be it!"

———

"Well," repeated my neighbor, "there's nothing to be ashamed of. We had a room to ourselves, I was a young man then, more given to that sort of thing—and I asked her what was the matter. She burst out crying!

"I felt very sorry for her. Besides being my wife, she was an orphan, away from her home, and altogether much to be pitied."

"Why so much to be pitied?" I wonder.

"You see, my mother, peace be upon her, died about two years before the marriage, and my father, peace be upon him, did not marry 

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