"Yes, but don't be angry, papaly darlin'. We'll do everything to please you. If you don't want him to be a doctor, he won't."
"A doctor!" he resumed, still speaking like one in a daze. "Is that what you have been up to? I see—you have got the best of me, after all. You married, Flora?" he repeated, unable to apply the meaning of the word to his daughter. "In court—without Canopy and Dedication—like Gentiles? What have you done, Flora?" He sank into a chair, gnashing his teeth and tearing at his sidelocks.
"Papaly, papaly, don't!" she sobbed, hugging and kissing him. "You know I ain't to blame for it all."
It dawned upon him that no serious wrong had been committed, after all, and that it could all be mended by a Jewish marriage ceremony; and so great was his relief at the thought that it took away all his anger, and he even felt as if he were grateful to his daughter for not being guilty of a graver transgression than she was.
"I know you are not to blame," he said, tragic in his calmness. "America has done it all. But what is the use talking! It's gone, and I am not going to take another sin upon my soul. I won't let you be his wife without Canopy and Dedication. Let the Jewish wedding come off at once—this week—to-morrow. You have got the best of me and I don't kick, do I? It seems God does not want Asrielke the boor to have some joy in his old age, nor a Kaddish for his soul, when the worms will be feasting upon his silly bones"—
"Oh, don't say that, papa. It'll break my heart if you do. You know Shaya is as good as a son to you."
"An appikoros my son? An appikoros my Kaddish? No," he rejoined, shaking his head pensively.
As he said it he felt as if Flora, too, were a stranger to him.
He descended to the basement in a state of mortal indifference.
"I have lost everything, Tamara," he said. "I have no daughter, either. I am all alone in the world—alone as a stone."