'You're a wonderful woman, Rosetta,' said Henry, smiling in response with admiring affection and making his incisors more prominent. He drew her head down to him and kissed her lips.
She returned his kiss lingeringly, and they had a flash of that happiness which is born of mutual fidelity and trust.
'Can I do anything for you, mum, afore I go to bed?' said stout old Mary O'Reilly, appearing at the door.
Mary was a privileged person, unappalled even by the butler. Having no relatives, she never took a holiday, and never went out, except to chapel.
'No, Mary, thank you. The dinner was excellent. Good-night, and merry Christmas!'
'Same to you, mum'; and as the unconscious instrument of Henry Goldsmith's candidature turned away, the Christmas bells broke merrily upon the night. The peals fell upon the ears of Raphael Leon, still striding along, casting a gaunt shadow on the hoar-frosted pavement, but he marked them not: upon Addie, sitting by her bedroom mirror thinking of Sidney speeding to the Christmas dance; upon Esther, turning restlessly on the luxurious eider-down, oppressed by panoramic pictures of the martyrdom of her race. Lying between sleep and waking, especially when her brain had been excited, she had the faculty of seeing wonderful vivid visions, indistinguishable from realities. The martyrs who mounted the scaffold and the stake all had the face of Raphael.
'The mission of Israel' buzzed through her brain. Oh, the irony of history! Here was another life going to be wasted on an illusory dream. The figures of Raphael and her father suddenly came into grotesque juxtaposition. A bitter smile passed across her face.
The Christmas bells rang on, proclaiming peace in the name of Him who came to bring a sword into the world.
'Surely,' she thought, 'the people of Christ has been the Christ of peoples.'
And then she sobbed meaninglessly in the darkness.