without ever lifting his eyes to see me, though his eyes might, in a better light, have passed over my shoes. He turned back to the Rebbe.
"I never thought to accuse you, any of you, of killing her!" said Gregory. "Such a thought never came to me, though where have I ever heard such words before except from your tongue! And I walk in your door and you accuse me of killing my stepdaughter! Why would I do such a thing? I come here out of respect for her dying words!"
The old man said very calmly, "I believe you. The poor child spoke those words. The papers told of strange words. I believe you. But I also know you killed your daughter. You had it done."
Gregory's arms tensed as do the arms of men who are about to strike others, but he couldn't and wouldn't strike the Rebbe. That would never happen with these two men, I knew. But Gregory was at the end of his tether, and the zaddik was certain of Gregory's guilt.
So was I. But what reason did I have for it? No more than the zaddik, perhaps.
I tried to peer into their souls, for surely they could boast of souls, the two of them, they were flesh and blood. I tried to look, as any human might look, as any ghost might plumb the depths of the soul of the living. I bent my head forward just a little as if the rhythm of their breathing would tell me, as if the beat of the heart would give away the secret. Gregory, did you kill her?
Did the old man ask the younger man the same thing? He leant forward in the light of his dusty bulb; his eyes were crinkled and bright.
He looked at Gregory again, and as he did so, quite by accident, and quite for certain, he saw me.
His eyes shifted very slowly and naturally from his grandson, to me.
He saw a man standing where I stood. He saw a young man with long curling dark hair and dark eyes. He saw a man of good height and good strength, very young, in fact, so young that some might have thought him still a boy. He saw me. He saw Azriel.
I smiled but only a little, like a man about to speak, not to mock.
I let him see the white of my teeth. I confided to his secret gaze that I had no fear of him. Like him, I stood, with a full beard and in black silk, a kaftan or long coat. Like him and one of his own.
And though I didn't know why or how I knew, I did know that I was one of his own, more surely than I was kin to the Huckster Prophet before him.
A surge of strength passed through me, as if the old man had laid his hands on the bones and howled for me! So it often happens, when seen, I grow strong. I was almost as strong in those moments as I am now.
The old man gave no signal to Gregory of what he had seen. He gave no signal to me. He sat still. The drift of his eyes over the room seemed natural and to settle on nothing, in particular, and to have no emotion, except the dim veil of sorrow.
He stared at me again, in the veiled way that Gregory would never notice. He held fast to me in perfect quiet.
Louder came the rush of pulse inside me, tighter the perfect shell of my body closed its pores. I could feel that he saw me and he found me beautiful! Young and beautiful! I felt the silk I wore, the weight of my hair.
Ah, you see me, Rebbe, you hear me. I spoke without moving my tongue.
He didn't answer me. He stared at me as a man stares in thought. But he had heard. He was no fake preacher, but a true zaddik and he had heard my little prayer.
But the younger man, thoroughly deceived and with his back to me, talked again in English:
"Rebbe, did you tell anyone else the old story? Did Esther by chance ever come here seeking to know who you were, and maybe you-"
"Don't be such a fool, Gregory," the old man said. He looked away from me for the moment. Then back at me as he went on. "I did not know your stepdaughter," he said. "She never came here. Neither has your wife. You