"My dear Fanny, what in Heaven's name is it?" I breathed.
"Don't speak of Heaven," said Fanny, in strange, harsh tones, "when you libel the dead thus."
"Libel the dead? How?"
"Why, the twenty-fourth of October was Yom Kippur."
"Well," I said, unimpressed and uncomprehending, "and what of it?"
She stared at me, staggered and clutched at the book-case for support.
"What of it?" she cried, in passionate emotion. "Do you dare to say that you saw my poor father, who was righteousness itself, breaking his fast in a restaurant on the Day of Atonement? Perhaps you will insinuate next that his speedy death was Heaven's punishment on him for his blasphemy!"
In the same instant I saw the truth and my terrible blunder. This fast-day must be of awful solemnity, and Fanny's father must have gone systematically to a surreptitious breakfast in that queer, out-of-the-way restaurant. His nervousness, his want of ease, his terror at the sight of me, whom he mistook for a brother-Jew, were all accounted for. Once a year—the discrepancy in the date being explained by the discord between Jewish and Christian chronology—he hied his way furtively to this unholy meal, enjoying it and a reputation for sanctity at the same time. But to expose her father's hypocrisy to the trusting, innocent girl would be hardly the way to advance love-matters. It might be difficult even to repair the mischief I had already done.
"I beg your pardon," I said humbly. "You were right. I was misled by some chance resemblance. If your father was the pious Jew you paint him, it is impossible he could have been the man I saw. Yes, and now I think of it, the eyebrows were bushier and the chin plumper than those of the photograph."
A sigh of satisfaction escaped her lips. Then her face grew rigid again as she turned it upon me, and asked in low tones that cut through me like an icy blast: "Yes, but what were you doing in the restaurant on the Day of Atonement?"