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may have been a grievous sin. There is an accounting — ”
    “You must stop,” Elizabeth says, putting on her panties, reaching for a sweater, “with this incessant sense of guilt. Guilt follows you wherever you go; you will not permit yourself to function. Your whole religion is based on guilt.”
    “Are you an anti-Semite?”
    “No,” she says with exasperation, “I am
not
an anti-Semite; I’m only trying to help you.” It is impossible, quite impossible. In a way she is sorry that she has gone to the couch with Schnitzler but then the only way, often, to deduce certain cases is to take chances with them. This will, probably, turn out to have been another one of her mistakes, yet she had to take the chance. She adjusts her skirt around her, suddenly anxious to be covered, anxious to end this. His shame and guilt have infected her; she is on the verge of losing her professional detachment. “Sometimes it’s important to talk about the things that are bothering you,” she says, “talking is very important, expressing your feeling, coming to grips with yourself. Don’t you understand that?” but it is hopelessness which envelops her like a shroud, not her clothing as she stands, dressed, before him. “You can’t go on this way,” she says, “don’t you realize that? You’ve got to take a stand, make a stand, cease this awful dependency. You must accept the fact of your own desires and act upon them without ambivalence; otherwise you’ll be on public assistance for the rest of your life.”
    “I am sorry,” Schnitzler says, “truly sorry, Miss Moore; I do not know what you are saying. I feel now that I must atone for a terrible sin. What I did I thought was right but now I see it was wrong. Forgiveness is what I need,” he says and goes to a shelf at the corner, seizes a prayer shawl and with hurried gestures covers himself. “I must go to the temple.”
    “Oh forget that nonsense,” she says, aware that she is losing her control and not even sure why this is the case but she is out of patience, thoroughly out of patience at the moment with the Schnitzlers and all they represent. “You just use that jargon to seal yourself off from reality, that’s the whole point of this. And it’s time for you to think of birth control. You must begin acting as a responsible adult; this breeding, this inconsiderate immature bearing of children into the world which you can neither support nor understand — ”
    “Sorry,” Schnitzler says, “I am truly sorry. You do not understand. I do not understand. Forgive me, Miss Moore, I will have to leave. You believe? Good.” He goes to the door, pulls it open abruptly and leaving Elizabeth to the emptiness of his apartment, stumbles into the street. Looking up through the cellar-level window she can see him scuttling on the sidewalk for a few paces, then he passes from view and is gone.
    Elizabeth shakes her head, picks up her fieldbook, takes a look around the apartment. For the first time she feels some regret: regret not for her behavior-pattern (for, confronted by all this need and longing how could she have done otherwise?) but for cajoling Schnitzler into an act which obviously he cannot rationalize. He would need heavy support-therapy to accept the lustful side of his own nature; she does not have the time or experience for this kind of counseling. Then too, there are intricacies to the chassidic subculture which, somewhere along the line, must have evaded her: she did not think that Schnitzler was capable of moral complexities. Tired: she feels tired, that is the basic thing. She has been trying too much. She has been pushing too hard. Overwhelmed by her inadequacy and the needs which it must, almost by itself, satisfy she has failed to take herself into consideration and this has been the prime failing.
    She puts her fieldbook under her arm, adjusts her pocketbook over her shoulder with the other hand. Tonight she will allow herself to rest. She will for