She looked helplessly from the rabbi to his nephew; but she found little to reassure her in Elias's face.
“Was there any thing you had to say to this young lady, before she goes, Elias?” the rabbi queried, in a brisk, business-like tone.
“No, nothing,” Elias began faintly, “nothing, except—yes, except—” He broke off, and drew a sharp, loud breath; suddenly he began anew: “Christine, I am powerless. The Lord—it is the Lord's will. I—it—what your father told you—it was the truth.”
The words found their own way out, mechanically. He could scarcely realize that he had spoken.
For an instant she stood motionless. Then she reeled and tottered, as if about to fall. Then she recovered herself. Slowly, with a dazed, stunned air, groping blindly, she turned, and reached the door, and crossed the threshold.
The rabbi followed, shutting the door behind him.
Elias dropped into a chair. Bewildered, agitated, fagged-out, undone—he felt all this. But he felt not a pang for her.
“If I had thrown you down and trampled upon you,” he wrote, a little less than two years afterward, “it would not have been so brutal, so cruel; but if I had done it in my sleep, I could not have been more insensible to your pain.”