THE MAGIC BARREL
603
Salzman looked up at first without recogmzmg him. Leo had
grown a pointed beard and his eyes were weighted with wisdom.
"Salzman," he said, "love has at last come to my heart."
"Who can love from a picture?" mocked the marriage broker.
"It is not impossible."
"If
you can love her, then you can love anybody. Let me show
you some new clients that they just sent me their photographs. One
is a little doll."
"Just her I want," Leo murmured.
"Don't be a fool, doctor. Don't bother with her."
"Put me in touch with her, Salzman," Leo said humbly. "Per–
haps I can do her a service."
Salzman had stopped chewing, and Leo understood with emo–
tion that it was now arranged.
Leaving the cafeteria, he was, however, afflicted by a tormenting
suspicion that Salzman had planned it all to happen this way.
Leo was informed by letter that she would meet him on a certain
corner, and she was there one spring night, waiting under a street
lamp. He appeared, carrying a small bouquet of violets and rosebuds,
Stella stood by the lamp post, smoking. She wore white with red
shoes, which fitted his expectations, although in a troubled moment
he had imagined the dress red, and only the shoes white. She w.aited
uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw that her eyes-clearly her
father's-were filled with desperate innocence. He pictured, in hers,
his own redemption. Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo
ran forward with the flowers outthrust.
Around the corner, Salzman, leaning against a wall, chanted
prayers for the dead.
