Levinsky. I was glad to hear of your rise in the world," he said, somewhat pompously. "I can't complain, either, though. However, our fields are so different."

The implication was that, while I had succeeded as a prosaic, pitiable cloak-manufacturer, he had conquered the world by the magic of his violin and compositions. He never referred to olden times. Instead, he boasted of his successes, present and future. The upshot of the interview was that I sent a check to the treasurer of the free conservatory of which Octavius was one of the founders

I was elated and happy, but there was a fly in the ointment of my happiness.

The question, "Who are you living for?" reverberated through the four vast floors of my factory, and the image of Miss Tevkin visited me again and again, marring my festive mood. My sense of triumph often clashed with a feeling of self-pity and yearning. The rebuff I had received at her hands in the afternoon of that storm lay like a mosquito in my soul

BOOK XIII

AT HER FATHER'S HOUSE

CHAPTER I

I MADE it my business to visit a well-known Hebrew book-store on Canal Street. I asked for Tevkin's works. It appeared that before he emigrated to America he had published three small volumes of verse and prose, that they had once aroused much interest, but that they were now practically out of print. I tried two other stores, with the same result. I was referred to the Astor Library, whose Hebrew department was becoming one of the richest in the world. Sitting down in a public library to read a book seemed to be an undignified proceeding for a manufacturer to engage in, but my curiosity was beyond considerations of this sort. Whenever I thought of Miss Tevkin I beheld the image of those three books—the only things related to her with which I was able to come in contact

Finally, on a Saturday afternoon, I found myself at one of the green tables of Astor Library. I was reading poetry written in the holy tongue, a language I had not used for more than eighteen years

Two of Tevkin's three little volumes were made up of poetry, while the third consisted of brief essays, prose, poems, "meditations," and epigrams. I came across a "meditation" entitled "My Children," and took it up eagerly. It contained but three sentences: "My children love me, yet my heart is hungry. They are mine, yet they are strangers. I am