"What! To whom?"
He turned a sickly white. "To me."
In all that long quest of the canopy, Leah had never come so near fainting as now. The horror of Ellis Island was nothing to this. That scene resurged, and Tsirrélé's fresh beauty, unflecked by the voyage, came up luridly before her; the "baby," whom the unnoted years had made a young woman of fifteen, while they had been aging and staling Biela.
"But—but this will break Biela's heart," she whispered, heart-broken.
"How was I to know Biela would ever get in?" he said, trying to be angry. "Was I to remain a bachelor all my life, breaking the Almighty's ordinance? Did I not wait and wait faithfully for Biela all those years?"
"You could have migrated elsewhere," she said faintly.
"And ruin my connection—and starve?" His anger was real by now. "Besides I have married into the family—it is almost the same thing. And the old mother is just as pleased."
"Oh, she!" and all the endured bitterness of the long years was in the exclamation. "All she wants is grandchildren."
"No, it isn't," he retorted. "Grandchildren with good eyes."
"God forgive you," was all the lump in Leah's throat allowed her to reply. She steadied herself with a hand on the counter, striving to repossess her soul for Biela's sake.