He was still watching her with a shrewd scrutiny, as though he made an estimate of her worth.
"That was her mother?" asked Truda. "The dead woman in the street, I mean?"
"Yes," answered the man. "That was her mother. Her father went the same way six months ago, but in another street."
Truda's lips parted, but she said nothing.
"Ah, perhaps your Excellency does not understand?" suggested the man.
The cynical humor in his face had no resemblance to mirth. "They were
Jews, you see—Jews."
"Judenhetze?" asked Truda. She had heard of old of that strange fever that seizes certain peoples and inflames them with a rabid lust for Jewish blood.
"Yes," answered the Jew. "That is what they call it. But a local variety. Here it is not sudden passion, but a thing suggested to the mob, and guided by police and officers. It is an expedient of politics."
He spoke with a restraint that was more than any, emphasis.
"And therefore," he went on, "the kindness of your Excellency is the greater, since you saved the child not from law-breakers, but from authority itself."
"I have done nothing," said Truda. "The child is a dear little thing.
I—I wish she were mine."