This astonishing picture of the candid simplicity of New York’s social life absorbed Jasper’s attention for some time.
“Wouldn’t you like to live in a city, Jane?”
She laughed her short, boyish “Hoo!” “It isn’t what I would like, Mr. Morena,” she said. “Why, I’d like to see the world. I would like to be that fellow who was condemned to wander all over the earth and never to die. He was a Jew, too, wasn’t he?”
Jasper flushed. People were not in the habit of making direct reference to his nationality, and, being an Israelite who had early cut himself off with dislike from his own people and cultivated the society of Gentiles, “a man without a country,” he was acutely sensitive.
“The Wandering Jew? Yes. Where did you ever hear of him?”
“I read his story,” she answered absently; “an awful long one, but interesting, about lots of people, by Eugène Sue.”
Jasper’s lips fell apart and he stared. She had spoken unwittingly and he could see that she was not thinking of him, that she was far away, staring beyond her horse’s head into the broad, sunset-brightened west.
“Where were you schooled?” he asked her.
He had brought her back and her face stiffened. She gave him a startled, almost angry look, dug her heels into her horse and broke into a gallop; nor could he win from her another word.
A few days before he left, he took Yarnall into his confidence. At first the rancher would do nothing but laugh. “Jane on the boards! That’s a notion!” followed by explosion after explosion of mirth. The Jew waited, patient, pliant, smiling, and then enumerated his reasons. He talked to Yarnall for an hour, at the end of which time, Yarnall, his eyes still twinkling, sent for Jane.