"—offers a home in her house——"
"I don't quite like the beginning," hesitated Anna. "I would rather leave out about the noble sentiments."
"As the gracious one pleases. Modesty can never be anything but an ornament. 'A Christian lady——'"
"But why a Christian lady? Why not simply a lady? Are there, then, heathen ladies about, that you insist on the Christian?"
"Worse, worse than heathen," replied the parson, sitting up straight, and fixing eyeballs suddenly grown fiery on her; and his voice fell to a hissing whisper, in strange contrast to his previous honeyed tones. "The heathen live in far-off lands, where they keep quiet till our missionaries gather them into the Church's fold—but here, here in our midst, here everywhere, taking the money from our pockets, nay, the very bread from our mouths, are the Jews."
Impossible to describe the tone of fear and hatred with which this word was pronounced.
Anna gazed at him, mystified. "The Jews?" she echoed. One of her greatest friends at home was a Jew, a delightful person, the mere recollection of whom made her smile, so witty and charming and kind was he. And of Jews in general she could not remember to have heard anything at all.
"But not only money from our pockets and bread from our mouths," continued the parson, leaning forward, his light grey eyes opened to their widest extent, and speaking in a whisper that made her flesh begin the process known as creeping, "but blood—blood from our veins."
"Blood from your veins?" she repeated faintly. It sounded horrid. It offended her ears. It had nothing to do with the advertisement. The strange light in his eyes made her think of fanaticism, cruelty, and the Middle Ages. The mildest of men in general, as she found later on, rabidness seized him at the mere mention of Jews.
"Blood," he hissed, "from the veins of Christians, for the performance of their unholy rites. Did the gracious one never hear of ritual murders?"