“That’s what Torah studies are.”

Twenty minutes later, spent, they lay quietly with their limbs tangled. He fingered her hair, then kissed one blond tendril after another.

She smiled to herself and stretched lazily. “When can I come over to your house?” she whispered.

“My mother is ill,” he whispered back. “She hasn’t left our home in weeks. Two maids and a cook service her. The house is never empty.”

“Then you must come back here. This week. Bring paper and ink.”

“I can’t until my next allowance.”

Batya sauntered to the dresser, feeling his eyes on her bare buttocks. She liked this passionate boy–turned–passionate man more than she should, even more than she did Ulmann, as much as she enjoyed the jeweler’s company. She retrieved a banknote from her linen drawer and tucked it in the pocket of Efram’s black caftan, thrown on the chair.

She returned to the bed and kissed him hard on the mouth. “Promise you’ll come back before Friday. With ink and paper.”

He didn’t return her kiss. Instead, he flung his legs off the bed and stood up.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, her heart sinking.

“These letters of yours. You’ll get yourself killed. Or me.”

She laughed, pretending that disappointment wasn’t crawling in her rib cage. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

She helped him button his shirt, her fingers grazing reddish chest hair. His body had filled out since she’d first met him. His ginger-colored beard was thicker, and he moved with certainty, as if his proven manhood with Batya bestowed confidence in other areas of his life.

She rubbed her breasts against his chest, and, pacified again, Efram buried his face in her neck. “If she is a wall, we will build towers of silver on her. If she is a door, we will enclose her with panels of cedar,” he quoted from Psalms. His hug was possessive, tight.

Batya savored the words of endearment as she guided him to the door. Very soon, the rabbi would marry him off. At least for a while, until she became pregnant, Efram’s wife would satisfy him.

Batya was relieved when he returned a week later. After paying Freda with Batya’s money, he stood by Batya’s dresser with paper and ink at the ready. “This is the last one,” he said, leveling his gaze at her, the gaze of a man who knew his mind. “I came because you’d given me the money, and I, in my weakness, God should forgive me, didn’t refuse as I should have.”

This was it, then. Her last chance to convince her father.