Her face grew sallower. 'I am glad your father isn't alive to hear that,' she breathed.
'But father said intermarriage is the solution,' retorted Simon.
Mrs. Cohn was struck dumb. 'He was thinking how to make the Boers English,' she said at last.
'And didn't he say the Jews must be English, too?'
'Aren't there plenty of Jewish girls who are English?' she murmured miserably.
'You mean, who don't care a pin about the old customs? Then where's the difference?' retorted Simon.
The meal finished in uncomfortable silence, and Simon went off to don his khaki regimentals and join in the synagogue parade.
Mrs. Cohn's heart was heavy as she dressed for the same spectacle. Her brain was busy piecing it all together. Yes, she understood it all now—those sedulous Saturday and Sunday afternoons at Harrow. She lived at Harrow, then, this Christian, this grateful sister of the rescued Winstay: it was she who had steadied his life; hers were those 'fat letters,' faintly aromatic. It must be very wonderful, this strange passion, luring her son from his people with its forbidden glamour. How Highbury would be scandalized, robbed of so eligible a bridegroom! The sons-in-law she had enriched would reproach her for the shame imported into the family—they who had cleaved to the Faith! And—more formidable than all the rest—she heard the tongue of her cast-off seaport, to whose reverence or disesteem she still instinctively referred all her triumphs and failures.
Yet, on the other hand, surged her hero-son's scorn at the union by contract consecrated by the generations! But surely a compromise could be found. He should have love—this strange English thing—but could he not find a Jewess? Ah, happy inspiration! he should marry a quite poor Jewess—he had money enough, thank Heaven! That would show him he was not making a match, that he was truly in love.
But this strange girl at Harrow—he would never be happy with her! No, no; there were limits to Anglicization.