It was the same voice, the English lady’s voice, bringing all Christendom about her, all the traditions within which, so lately, she had felt herself committed steadfastly to tread. But there was something left out of it, a warmth was missing, it had not in it the glow that was in those other women’s voices, of kindliness towards the generous things they had secretly, willingly renounced. It had, instead, something that was like a cold clean blade thrusting into an intelligible future, something inexorable, founded not upon fixed ideas, but upon ideas, single and cold. This woman would not make concessions; she would always stand, uncompromisingly, in face of everyone, men and women, for the same things, clear cut, delicate and narrowly determining as her voice.
“You are considering the possibility of embracing the Jewish faith?”
“Well, no,” said Miriam startled into briskness by the too quickly developing accumulation of speech. “I heard that you had done so; and wondered, how it was possible, for an Englishwoman.”
“You are a Christian?”
“I don’t know. I was brought up in the Anglican Church.”
“Much depends upon the standpoint from which one approaches the very definite and simple creed of Judaism. I myself was a Unitarian, and therefore able to take the step without making a break with my earlier convictions.”
“I see,” said Miriam coldly. Fate had deceived her, holding in reserve the trick of this simple explanation. She gazed at the seated figure. The glow of her surroundings was quenched by the chill of a perpetually active reason.... Science, ethics, withering common-sense playing over everything in life, making a harsh bareness everywhere, seeing nothing alive but the cold processes of the human mind; having Tennyson read at services because poetry was one of the superior things produced by humanity...... She wondered whether this woman, so exactly prepared to meet a Jewish reform movement, had been helplessly born into Unitarianism, or had taken it up as she herself had nearly done.
“Much of course depends upon the synagogue through which one is admitted.” Ah; she had felt the impossibilities. She had compromised and was excusing her compromise.
“Of course I have heard of the reform movement.” .. The silence quivered with the assertion that the reformers were as much cut off from Judaism as Unitarianism from Anglican Christianity. To enter a synagogue that made special arrangements for the recognition of women was to admit that women were dependent on recognition. The silence admitted the dilemma. Mrs. Bergstein had passed through these thoughts, suffering? Though she had found a way through, following her cold clear reason, she still suffered?
“I think I should find it impossible to associate with Jewish women.”