Behind this dignitary sat his sons, and their wives, and his
daughters and their husbands, and their children, and so on,
back to the Brandeis pew, third from the last, behind which
sat only a few obscure families branded as Russians, as only
the German-born Jew can brand those whose misfortune it is
to be born in that region known as hinter-Berlin.

The morning flew by, with its music, its responses, its
sermon in German, full of four- and five-syllable German
words like Barmherzigkeit and Eigentumlichkeit. All
during the sermon Fanny sat and dreamed and watched the
shadow on the window of the pine tree that stood close to
the temple, and was vastly amused at the jaundiced look that
the square of yellow window glass cast upon the face of the
vain and overdressed Mrs. Nathan Pereles. From time to time
Bella would turn to bestow upon her a look intended to
convey intense suffering and a resolute though dying
condition. Fanny stonily ignored these mute messages. They
offended something in her, though she could not tell what.

At the noon intermission she did not go home to the tempting
dinner smells, but wandered off through the little city park
and down to the river, where she sat on the bank and felt
very virtuous, and spiritual, and hollow. She was back in
her seat when the afternoon service was begun. Some of the
more devout members had remained to pray all through the
midday. The congregation came straggling in by twos and
threes. Many of the women had exchanged the severely
corseted discomfort of the morning's splendor for the