'You mean—about the certificate? Because I made out that he was younger?'
Miss Ralston nodded.
'You know David has such a sense of honor,' she explained, speaking slowly, embarrassed by the effort of following Mr. Rudinsky’s train of thought and her own at the same time. 'You know how he questions everything—sooner or later he makes everything clear to himself—and something must have started him thinking of this old matter lately—Why, of course! I remember I asked him his age that day, when he tried on the costume, and he answered as usual, and then, I suppose, he suddenly realized what he was saying. I don’t believe he ever thought about it since—since you arranged it so, and now, all of a sudden—'
She did not finish, because she saw that her listeners did not follow her. Both their faces expressed pain and perplexity. After a long silence, David’s father spoke.
'And what do you think, ma’am?'
Miss Ralston was touched by the undertone of submission in his voice. Her swift sympathy had taken her far into his thoughts. She recognized in his story one of those ethical paradoxes which the helpless Jews of the Pale, in their search for a weapon that their oppressors could not confiscate, have evolved for their self-defence. She knew that to many honest Jewish minds a lie was not a lie when told to an official; and she divined that no ghost of a scruple had disturbed Mr. Rudinsky in his sense of triumph over circumstances, when he invented the lie that was to insure the education of his gifted child. With David, of course, the same philosophy had been valid. His father’s plan for the protection of his future, hingeing on a too familiar sophistry, had dropped innocuous into his consciousness, until, in a moment of spiritual sensitiveness, it took on the visage of sin.
'And what do you think, ma’am?'
David’s father did not have to wait a moment for her answer, so readily did her insight come to his defense. In a few eager sentences she made him feel that she understood perfectly, and understood David perfectly.
'I respect you the more for that lie, Mr. Rudinsky. It was—a noble lie!' There was the least tremor in her voice. 'And I love David for the way he sees it.'
Mr. Rudinsky got up and paced slowly across the room. Then he stopped before Miss Ralston.