clothes covered with dust, he came home from one of his business tours
on a Sabbath morning, when the people in holiday attire were wending
their way to the synagogue.

Nevertheless, not a sound of complaint escaped Gudule's lips. Hers was
one of those proud, sensitive natures, such as are to be met with among
all classes and amid all circumstances of life, in Ghetto and in
secluded village, no less than among the most favored ones of the earth.
Had she not cast to the winds the well-intentioned counsel given her in
that unsigned letter? Why then should she complain and lament, now that
the seed had borne fruit? She shrank from alluding before her husband
to the passion which day by day, nay, hour by hour, tightened its hold
upon him. She would have died sooner than permit the word "gambler" to
pass her lips. Besides, did not her eyes tell Ascher what she suffered?
Those very eyes were, according to Ascher, the cause of his rapid
journey along the road to ruin.

"Why do you look at me so, Gudule?" he would testily ask her, at the
slightest provocation.

Often when, as he explained, he had had "a specially good week," he
would bring home the costliest gifts for his children. Gudule, however,
made no use whatever of these trinkets, neither for herself nor for the
children. She put the things away in drawers and cupboards, and never
looked at them, more especially as she observed that, under some pretext
or another, Ascher generally took those glittering things away again,
"in order to exchange them for others," he said: as often as not never
replacing them at all.

"Gudule!" he said one day, when he happened to be in a particularly good