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Jews pray three times a day: morning, afternoon and dusk and what is there to be said about Schnitzler who is missing one-third of his daily output of prayers to possess her? Maybe she will be able to convince him after all that his religion is an anachronism, that he must not hide his self-sufficiency and esteem behind it and can instead enter into the world. “Ah,” Schnitzler says again, “God almighty,” and she feels him come within her. Most of them she cannot feel but this one she definitely does: his orgasm is enormous, spilling and guttering into her and patiently she rides him out. She is anesthetized underneath which is too bad because in some intense way, with Schnitzler, she would like to come: a pity that she cannot.
    He collapses across her, at length, groaning, burying his head into her neck, sniffing and snorting, his cheeks moving as if in laughter and then slowly, slowly moves upward from her, rises to his knees and looks around the room with a curiously abstracted expression. It is as if he is looking at everything for the first time. “Well,” he says stupidly after a while, “I should be getting dressed.”
    “If you want to.”
    “So should you. They won’t be at the baths all afternoon. Just to be safe.”
    “Whatever you say,” she says. She flexes her arms, stretches, yawns in an affected way. “That was wonderful,” she says, “it was really good.”
    “Well,” Schnitzler says, making a tilting gesture with his hand, “well, you know how it is. Are you by any chance Jewish?”
    “Does it matter?”
    “Not really,” Schnitzler says. “Not if you say so.”
    “Do you feel that it would be better for you if I were Jewish? Do you have any sense of guilt?”
    “No,” Schnitzler says, standing, groaning, looking for his clothing. “No, no guilt. I do not understand. I cannot talk so well in English. Do you perhaps speak Jewish?
    “No.”
    “But you could be Jewish, is that what you say?”
    “Look, Rabbi Schnitzler,” Elizabeth says, at ease before him in her nudity. “Jewishness has nothing to do with it. You must stop this parochialism. You cannot live like that forever. There are larger meanings, possibilities — ”
    “Of course,” Schnitzler says absently. “Of course, I understand that.” His brow is creased, his face distracted, in no way does he seem to be the man with whom she has fornicated. Rather, with clumsy haste, he stumbles toward his clothing and begins to dress. “Many social workers we have had during our time in this country,” he says. “Of course — ”
    “But you feel this is different.”
    “I feel you should get dressed.”
    “I will, Rabbi,” Elizabeth says gently, realizing that Schnitzler for some reason is on the edge of panic. “I’ll get dressed right away. I only thought we might talk for a moment.”
    “What is there to talk about?”
    “Many things,” she says, standing, looking for her clothes which as always do not seem to be in the spot she has left them. She must remember to make a more precise accounting of this; it would eliminate all kinds of awkwardness at the end of copulation. Elizabeth is willing to admit that things still are not working out quite the way they should; rather than being open and easy to counsel after fornication Schnitzler (like many of the others) seems to have gone away from her. “Why do you think that I had sex with you?”
    “Sex?”
    “Don’t you know what that means? Why do you think that we made love together?”
    “Oh,” Schnitzler says, “sex. Made love. Now I understand. I do not speak English too well; I have many troubles with the language although I try. I do not know why you had sex with me, Miss Moore.”
    “Don’t you? Are you sure you don’t?”
    “Miss Moore,” Schnitzler says, reaching for his phylacteries and adjusting them around his belt, “believe me, I would like to tell you these many things but I cannot. I am not even sure that we should have done this. It