Leo Finkle, the rabbinical student, decides he needs a wife. With considerable trepidation, he contacts Pinye Salzman, the matchmaker, who eagerly describes an array of women. Leo finds fault with all of them. Finally, after a disastrous date arranged by the matchmaker, Leo discovers a photograph, seemingly left with the others by accident.
Malamud describes the moment in lyrical language: "Her face deeply moved him. Why, he could at first not say. It gave him the impression of youth - spring flowers, yet age - a sense of having been used to the bone, wasted; this came from the eyes, which were hauntingly familiar, yet absolutely strange ... she leaped forth to his heart - had *lived,* or wanted to ... it could be seen in the depths of those reluctant eyes, and from the way the light enclosed and shone from her, and within her, opening realms of possibility: this was her own. Her he desired."
And yet, "he received an impression, somehow, of evil. He shuddered, saying softly, it is thus with us all .... Only such a one could understand him and help him seek whatever he was seeking."
