THE YOKE OF THE THORAH

IT was the last day of November, 1882. The sun had not shone at all that day. The wind, sharp-edged, had blown steadily from the northeast. The clouds, leaden of hue and woolly of texture, had hung very close to the earth. Weather-wise people had predicted snow—the first snow of the season; but none had fallen. Rheumatic people had had their tempers whetted. Impressionable people, among them Elias Bacharach, had been beset by the blues.

Elias had tried hard to absorb himself in his work; but without success. His colors would not blend. His brushes had lost their cunning. His touch was uncertain. His eye was false. At two o'clock he had given up in despair, and sent his model home. Then he sat down at the big window of his studio, and looked off across the tree-tops into the lowering north. A foolish thing to do. It was a cheerless prospect. In the clouds he could trace a hundred sullen faces. The tree-tops shivered. The whistling wind, the noises of the street, the drone of a distant hand-organ, mingled in dreary, enervating counterpoint. His own mood darkened. Though he had every reason to be contented—though he had youth, art, independence, excellent health, sufficient wealth, and not a care in the world—he was nervous and restless and depressed. The elements were to blame. Under gray skies, which of us has not had pretty much the same experience?

By and by Elias got up.

“I'll go out,” he said, “and walk it off.”

He went out. For a while he walked aimlessly hither and thither. But walking did not bring the hoped-for relief. He and the world were out of tune. The men and women whom he passed were one and all either commonplace or ugly. The sounds that smote his ears were inharmonious. The wind sent a chill to his bones; besides, it bore a disagreeable odor of petroleum from the refineries across the river. “I might as well—I might better—have remained within-doors,” was his reflection. Presently, however, he found himself in Union Square. This reminded him that there was a little matter about which he wanted to see Matthew Redwood, the costumer. Elias had lately read Mistral's “Mirèio.” The poem had fired his enthusiasm. He was bent upon making Mirèio the subject of a picture. But, he had asked himself, what style of costume do the Provençal peasant women wear? He had determined to consult Redwood. Now, being in Redwood's neighborhood, he would call upon the old man, and state the question.

Redwood's place was just below Fourteenth Street, on Fourth Avenue. The house had formerly been a dwelling-house. In the process of its degeneracy, it had most likely passed through the boarding-house stage. At present it was given over without reserve to commerce. A German drinking-shop occupied the basement, impregnating the air round about with a smell of stale lager beer. Redwood used the parlors—large, lofty apartments, with paneled walls and frescoed ceilings—and the floors above. The frescoes, of course, dated from the dwelling-house epoch. Their hues were sadly faded. Here and there, in patches, the paint had peeled off. Three pallid cupids, wretchedly out of drawing, floated around the plaster medallion from which the gas fixture depended. Elias never entered here without thinking of the curious secrets those cupids might have whispered, if they had been empowered to open their painted lips. What scenes of joy and sorrow had they not looked down upon in the past? Merry-makers had danced beneath them; women had wept beneath them; lovers had wooed their mistresses beneath them; what else? The intimate inner life of a family, of a home, had gone on beneath them. How many domestic quarrels had they watched? How many weddings? How many funerals? What strange stories had they not overheard? Of what strange doings had they not been mute witnesses? Between the windows stood a tall pier-glass. Its gilt frame was chipped and tarnished. A milky film, like that which obscures the eyes of an aged man, had gathered over its surface. The quicksilver was veined, like a leaf. It had a very knowing look, this ancient mirror, as though, if it had chosen, it could have startled you with ghostly effigies of the forms and faces that it had reflected in by-gone years. Elias Bacharach, who enjoyed having his fancy stirred, was always glad of an excuse to drop in at Redwood's.

Elias climbed Redwood's stoop, and opened the door. It had been dark enough outside. Inside it was darker still. It took a little while for Elias's eyesight to accommodate itself to the change. Then the first object of which it became conscious was the sere and yellow pier-glass between the windows. Far in its mottled depths—down, that is to say, at the remotest and darkest end of the room—he saw Matthew Redwood, the costumer, in conversation with a young girl. The young girl's face, a spot of light amid the surrounding shadows, had an instantaneous and magnetic effect upon Elias Bacharach's gaze. He quite forgot his old friends, the cupids. Turning about, and drawing as near to the couple as discretion would warrant, he made the young girl the victim of a fixed, eager stare.

She was worth staring at. From under the brim of her bonnet escaped an abundance of golden hair—true golden hair, that gleamed like a mesh of sunbeams. In rare and beautiful contrast to this, she had a pair of luminous brown eyes, set like living jewels beneath dark eyebrows and a snowy forehead. Add a rose-red, full-lipped mouth, white teeth, and faintly blushing cheeks; and you have the elements from which to form a conception of her. She was chatting vivaciously with the master of the premises. In response to some remark of his, she laughed. Her laugh was as crisp, as merry, as melodious, as a chime of musical glasses. Who could she be, and what, Elias wondered. Probably an actress. Few ladies, unless actresses, had dealings with the costumer, Redwood. Yet, at the utmost, she was not more than seventeen years old; and her natural and unsophisticated bearing seemed in no wise suggestive of the green-room. Ah! now she was going. “Good-by,” Elias heard her say, in a voice that started a quick vibration in his heart; and next moment she swept past, within a yard of him, and crossed the threshold, and was gone. For an instant, never so delicate and impalpable a perfume, shaken from her apparel, lingered upon the air. Elias stood still, facing the door through which she had disappeared.

“Ah, good-day, Mr. Bacharach; what can I do for you?” old Redwood asked, coming up and offering his hand.

“You can tell me who that wonderful young lady is,” it was on the tip of Elias's tongue to reply: but he stopped himself. Without clearly knowing why, he was loth to reveal to another the interest and the admiration that she had aroused in him. He was afraid that his motive might be misconstrued, afraid of compromising his dignity, of appearing too easily susceptible in the old man's eyes. So he put down his curiosity, and began about Mirèio, demanding enlightenment on the score of Provençal costumes.

“Provençal costumes,” the old man repeated, with a twang that savored of New Hampshire; “South-French, we say in the trade. Why, certainly. I've got a whole lot of lithographs, that show all the varieties. But they're up to my house. You couldn't make it convenient to come and look at them there, could ye? Then I'd lend you those that struck your fancy.”

“That's very kind of you,” said Elias. “Where do you live? And when would it suit you to have me call?”

“I live up in West Sixty-third Street, No.——; and you might drop in most any evening after dinner—to-night, if you've got nothing better to do.”

“Very well; to-night, then,” agreed Elias, and bade the old man good afternoon.

He went back to his studio. He had got rid of his blues; but he could not get rid of his vision of the golden-haired young lady. That, fleeting as it had been, had photographed itself upon his retina. Again and again he heard her tinkling laughter. Again and again he breathed the evanescent, penetrating perfume that she had left behind her upon quitting the costumer's shop. Excepting his mother, now dead, and the models whom he employed, Elias Bacharach had never known a woman, young or old, upon terms of greater intimacy than those required for bowing in the street, or paying one or two formal calls a year. Until to-day, indeed, he had never even seen a woman whom he had desired to know more closely. But this young girl with the golden hair had taken singular possession of his fancy. A score of questions concerning her presented themselves for solution. Her name? He ran over all the women's names that he could think of, from Abigail down to Zillah, seeking for one that seemed to fit her. None struck him as delicate or musical enough. Her condition in life? Was she, after all, an actress? If so, at what theater? He did not care much for the theater as a general thing; but if he only knew at which one she performed, he would certainly go to see her. Her age? Had he been right in setting it down at seventeen? Where did she live? Who were her family? Would he, Elias Bacharach, ever come face to face with her again? What were the chances of his some time having an opportunity to make her acquaintance? Perhaps he knew somebody who knew her, and could introduce him to her. Only, he was ignorant of her name, and therefore powerless to institute inquiries. How stupid he had been not to ask Redwood; how absurdly timid and self-conscious! But it was not yet too late. He would ask him at his house in the evening. Then, having identified her, it might be possible, by one means or another, to procure a presentation. Delightful prospect! How he would enjoy talking to her, and hearing her talk, and all the while feasting his eyes upon the delicious loveliness of her face! He wondered whether her character accorded with her appearance. Was she as sweet and as pure and as bright, as she was beautiful? He wondered—But it would take too long to tell all the wonderment of which she was subject. When evening came, Elias promised himself, old Redwood should gratify his thirst for information.

II.

AT eight o'clock Elias was ushered by a maid, servant into Redwood's parlor. Redwood's parlor was the conventional oblong parlor of the conventional New York house, conventionally furnished and decorated. It had white walls, black walnut wood-work, a gaudily stenciled ceiling, and a florid velvet carpet, into which your feet sank an inch, and which gave off a faint but acrid odor of dye-stuffs. For pictures there were three steel engravings—The Last Supper, The Signing of the Declaration of Independence, The Landing of the Pilgrims—all hung as near to heaven as the limitations of space would allow. The chairs were of mahogany, upholstered in sleek and slippery hair cloth. Upon the huge sarcophagus which served for mantelpiece, a gilt clock, under a glass dome, registered five minutes past six, with stationary hands. This started one's mind irresistibly backward, in quest of the precise point in time at which the clock had stopped, and set one to speculating upon what the condition of the world was then.. Years ago, or only months? In summer, or winter? Morning or afternoon? What of moment was happening then? Who was President? Where was I, and what doing? Perhaps—it was such an old-fashioned clock—perhaps I had not yet been born. In the corner furthest from the window there was a square piano, closed, and covered by a dark brown cloth, like a pall. Just above it, so that they could not be reached except by standing upon it, some book-shelves were suspended. These contained the “Arabian Nights,” “The History of the Bible,” Cooper's novels, and an old edition of the “New American Cyclopedia.” Beneath the chandelier stood a center table, with a top of variegated marbles. This bore a student's lamp, a Russia leather writing case, an ivory paper knife, a photograph of Mr. Emerson, and half a score of books. The literature of the center table was rather more seasonable than that of the hanging shelves. Greene's “Short History of the English People,” “The Victorian Poets,” “Society and Solitude,” and the “Poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti,” testified that somebody had modern instincts, testimony which was corroborated by an open copy of “Adam Bede,” laid face downward upon the sofa. Elias wondered who somebody might be.

Presently old Redwood entered, in dressing-gown and slippers. He carried a large bundle under his arm.

“Here,” said he, “are the plates I spoke of. Run them over, and pick out those that please ye.” The examination of the plates occupied perhaps a quarter-hour. When it was finished, Elias thanked the old man, and began to make his adieux. Then, abruptly, as though the question had but just occurred to him, “Oh, by the way,” he inquired, in a tone meant to be careless and casual, “can you tell me who that young lady was—the young lady I saw down at your place this afternoon?”

“Young lady?” queried Redwood, with a blank look, scratching his chin, and knitting his brow. “Down to my place? What young lady?”

“Why, a young lady with golden hair. You were talking to her when I came in.”

“Oh, with golden hair—oh, yes.” The blank look gave way to an intelligent and slightly quizzical one. “But why do you want to know?”

“She's such a remarkable bit of coloring,” explained Elias; “the finest I've seen this long while. I'd give my right hand to be allowed to paint her.”

“Your right hand! Rather a high offer that, ain't it?”

“Well, but there's not much danger of its being accepted.”

“I don't know,” said Redwood, reflectively, “I'm not so sure.”

“What?” cried Elias. The syllable did duty for expletive and interrogatory at the same time.

“I say I'm not sure but it might be managed.” Breathlessly: “But what might be managed?”

Redwood's meaning was clear enough; but it seemed to Elias too good and too surprising to be true. So he chose to have it set forth in terms of positive affirmation.

“Why, what are we talking about? But she might be got to sit for ye.”

“You don't say so? Are you serious? How?”

“Well, we're pretty well acquainted, she and I. I might propose it to her.”

“Do—do, by all means. But is there any likelihood of her consenting?”

“Why, yes, I guess she'd consent—that is, if I urged her.”

“Oh, well, you will urge her, won't you?”

The old man closed one eye, and twirled his mustache. “Hum; that depends. You must make it worth my while.”

“Worth your while?” faltered Elias, surprised, and somewhat shocked, at discovering old Redwood to be so mercenary. “Well—well, what do you want?”

“I want—let me see. Well, I guess I want the picture. You must make me a present of the picture.”

“Oh, come; that's unreasonable.”

“I thought you said you'd give your right hand I shouldn't have much use for that. So I'll take your handiwork, instead.”

“That was a figure of speech. I'll pay a fair price, though. Name one that will satisfy you.”

“I've just done so.”

“Oh, but that's ridiculous.”

“Well, that's the only price I'll talk about. And I'll tell you this, besides: she never'll sit for you at all, unless I advise her to. She sets great store by my opinion. You promise me the picture, and I'll guarantee you her consent.”

“It's asking a great deal. It's asking far too much.”

“All right. Then say no more about it.”

“But—”

“Oh, you can't beat me down, Mr. Bacharach. When I say a thing, I mean it. You'll only waste your breath, trying to haggle with me. The picture, or nothing—those are my terms.”

Elias's eyes were full of the young girl's beauty; his ears still rang with the music of her laughter; the prospect that old Redwood held out was such an unexpected and such a tempting one: “So be it,” he said impulsively. “You shall have the picture.”

“It's a bargain,” cried Redwood. “Shake on it.” After they had shaken hands: “When would you like to begin?”

“At once—as soon as possible.”

“I'll ask her to fix an early day.”

“But are you sure? Is there no chance of her refusing?”

“Now, haven't I given you my word? What you afraid of? The sittings, of course, will be had at her residence, not in your studio.”

“Oh, of course. Just as she chooses about that. Is—is she an actress?”

“An actress!” The old man laughed. “Bless you, no! What put that idea into your head?”

“Oh, I don't know. I thought she might be. But her name—you haven't told me her name.”

“Her name—Excuse me a minute,” said Redwood.

He stepped to the door, stuck his head into the hall, and called at the top of his voice, “Chris.... tine!”

“Yes.”

The word tinkled musically in the distance.

“Come down here to the parlor, will ye?”

“Yes, father.”

Elias's pulse bounded. Did he indeed recognize the voice? What a ninny he had been making of himself! How inordinately dense, not to have guessed their relationship from old Redwood's assurance in answering for her. He felt awkward and embarrassed; and yet he felt a certain excitement that was not at all unpleasant.

“Mr. Bacharach, permit me to make you acquainted with my daughter, Miss Christine Redwood,” said the old man.

Elias bowed, but dared not look at her to whom he bowed. He heard her bid him a silvery good-evening. Then he stole a side glance. Yes, it was she, she of the golden locks.

“Ha-ha-ha!” roared old Redwood. “Quite a surprise, eh, Mr. Bacharach?”

“A—a delightful one, I'm sure,” stammered Elias.

“Well, now, then, sit down, sit down, both of you,” the old man rattled on. “That's right. There, now we can proceed to business. Chris, Mr. Bacharach here, an old customer of mine, is a painter, an artist—with an especial eye to fine bits of coloring, hey, Mr. Bacharach?”

“Oh,” Christine responded softly, her eyes brightening, and the pale rose tint deepening a little in her cheeks; “are you the Mr. Bacharach who painted that beautiful picture of Sister Helen at the last exhibition?”

“It's very kind of you to call it beautiful,” said Elias, immensely surprised and flattered to find himself thus recognized by his work; especially flattered, because he spoke sincerely when he added, “I myself was discouraged about it. It's so entirely inadequate to the poem, you know.”

“Why, it didn't seem so to me. On the contrary I never quite appreciated the poem till I saw your picture—never quite felt all the terror of it. I think you made it wonderfully vivid. I remember how she bent over the fire, and how fierce her eyes were, and how her hair streamed down her breast and shoulders; and then, the great, dark room, and the balcony, and the moonlight outside! Oh, I liked the picture—I can't tell you how much.”

“Well,” broke in old Redwood, “you two seem to be old friends. I don't see as there was much use of my introducing you. But what I should like to know is, who was it a picture of? Whose Sister Helen?”

“Why, Rossetti's,” explained Christine, laughing. “The heroine of one of Rossetti's poems.”

“Oh, so,” said the old man, with an inflection of disappointment.

“Are you fond of Rossetti, Miss Redwood?” Elias asked. “I noticed you had his volume on the table, when I came in.”

“Oh, I adore him. Don't you? I think it's the most beautiful poetry that ever was written—though, to be sure, I haven't read all. But I don't know any body else that agrees with me—unless you do. Now, my father, for instance. I was reading one of the sonnets aloud to him this very evening—just before the bell rang. He—what do you suppose? He laughed at it, and called it rubbish.”

“I did, for a fact,” admitted Redwood. “I can't get the hang of that rigmarol. It's too mixed up.”

“Well, I don't pretend to understand everything Rossetti has written,” said Christine; “not every single line. But that's my fault, not his. Sometimes he's so very deep. But the sonnet I read to you to-night—it was the one about work and will awaking too late, to gaze upon their life sailed by, Mr. Bacharach—that wasn't the least bit difficult.”

“Well,” Redwood confessed, “I like a poet who talks the English language straight. Shakespeare's good enough for me, and Longfellow. But Chris, here, she goes in for all the modern improvements, especially poetry. One day I found her purse lying on the parlor table. Think, s's I, I'll open it, to put in a little surprise. By George, sir, it was stuffed out to bursting with slips of poetry cut from the newspapers! And then, aestheticism! Oscar-Wildism, I call it. She's caught that, I don't know where; and she's got it bad. Actually, she wanted me to disfigure the hard finish of these walls, here, with one of those new-fangled, aesthetic papers. But the Lord blessed me with some hard sense; and so we manage to keep things pretty much as they air.”

“Air” was Redwood's way of pronouncing “are,” when he wished to be emphatic.

“My father,” observed Christine, “is a deep-dyed conservative, in music, literature, politics, art, and every thing else except costumes. In the matter of costumes, I believe, he's very nearly abreast of the times.”

“Oh, you needn't except costumes,” cried Redwood. “The science of costuming is a branch of archaeology. So that don't count. But look at here, Chris. What you suppose Mr. Bacharach and I have just been talking about? Guess.”

“About—? Oh, I can't guess. I give it up.”

“About you.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“I hope he told you nothing bad about me, Mr. Bacharach.”

“Oh, we weren't discussing your character. Men don't gossip, you know. We were talking about having your portrait painted. I've made arrangements with Mr. Bacharach to have him paint your portrait.”

“Oh!” Christine exclaimed. Her brown eyes opened wide, and her cheeks reddened slightly.

“And the question is,” Redwood pursued, “when will you give him the first sitting?”

“Why, that is for you to say, father.”

“Well, then, I say Sunday morning. How does that strike you, Mr. Bacharach?”

“Oh, any time will be agreeable to me,” replied Elias.

“Well, Chris, shall we make it Sunday morning?”

“Just as you please.”

“All right. Note that, Mr. Bacharach. Sunday morning, December third. I suppose you'd better send your apparatus—easel, and so forth—in advance, hadn't ye?”

“Yes; I'll send them to-morrow.”

“That settles it. And now, Chris, listen to me. I want to tell you a good joke. Perhaps you didn't notice, but when you were down to the shop this afternoon, Mr. Bacharach here, he came in; and he—” And to the unutterable confusion of Elias, the merciless old man proceeded to tell his daughter the whole story. He wound up thus: “And, actually, Chris, he took you to be an actress. What you scowling at me for? He did, for a fact. He can't deny it. Didn't you, Mr. Bacharach? Didn't you ask me if she wasn't an actress?”

Elias appealed to Christine.

“Your father is very cruel, isn't he, Miss Redwood?”

“He loves to tease,” she assented. Then, with a touch of concern, “You mustn't feel badly. He never means to hurt anybody's feelings,” she added, and looked earnestly into Elias Bacharach's face. That look caused him a sensation, the like of which he had never experienced before. His lip trembled. His breath quickened. His heart leaped. “Thank—thank you,” he said, with none but the most confused notion of what he said, or why he said it.

Pretty soon he took his leave.

Elias dwelt in East Fifteenth Street. The house faced Stuyvesant Park. In this house, March 22, 1856, Elias had been born. In this house, May 13, 1856, Elias's father had died. In this house, alone with his mother and her brother, the Reverend Dr. Felix Gedaza, rabbi to the Congregation Gates of Pearl, Elias had lived till he was twenty-four years old. Then his mother, too, had died. Since then, he and the rabbi had kept bachelor's hall. It was a large, old-fashioned, red-brick house, very plain and respectable of exterior, and very bare, sombre and silent within. Elias had converted the front room on the top floor into a studio. Thus he had a north light and a wide view. In his childhood this room had been his play-room. During his boyhood it had been his bed-room. Now it was his work-room—consequently his living-room, in the most vital sense of the word. Its four walls had watched him grow up. The view from its window had been his daily comrade, ever since he had been old enough to have any comrade at all. In a manner, it had been his confidant and his counselor, too. It was his habit, whenever he had any thing on his mind, to station himself at that window, and look off across the park, and think it out. Hither he had come in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, in the blackest moments of his discouragement, in the brightest moments of his hope. Here he had solved many a doubt, confronted many a disappointment, built many an air-castle, registered many a vow. He was twenty-six years old. Not a phase or episode of his development, but was associated in his memory with that view.

Here, returning from Redwood's on the last night of November, 1882, he sat down, and abandoned himself to a whole set of new emotions that had been let loose in his heart. He did not understand these emotions; he did not try to understand them. If he had understood them, he might have taken measures to subdue them in their inception; and then the whole course of his subsequent life would have been altered, and this story would never have been told. They were very vague, very strange, very different from any thing that he had ever experienced before, and very, very pleasant. As often as he went over the events of the evening, recalling Christine's appearance, and her manner, and the way she had looked at him, and the words that she had spoken, he became conscious of a sudden, delicious glow of warmth in his breast. Then, when he went forward into the time yet to come, and began to paint her portrait in imagination, he had to draw a long breath, a deep sigh of pleasure, so exhilarating and so fascinating was the outlook. By and by he was called back to the present, by the clock of St. George's church tolling out midnight. He started, rose, stretched himself, went to bed. But an hour or two elapsed before he got to sleep. Christine's golden hair and lustrous eyes lighted up his dreams.

III.

SUNDAY came; and with it a warm sun, a blue sky, a soft, southerly breeze. It was one of those days, peculiar to our climate, which, though they may fall in the middle of winter, bear the fragrance of April upon their breath, and resuscitate for a moment in one's heart all the keen emotions dead since last spring-time. Elias presented himself at the Redwood house shortly after nine o'clock. Christine smiled upon him, and gave him a warm little hand to press. Her father asked, “How about costume? Want her to make up?” Elias said, “Oh, no; what she has on is perfect.” That was a simple gown of some dark blue stuff, confined at the waist by a broad band of cardinal ribbon. Her golden hair was caught in a loose knot behind her ears. Elias set up his easel in the parlor. Then he began the process of posing the model. This called for nice discrimination, and was productive of much mirthful debate. At last it was finished.

“Now,” said old Redwood, “this is altogether too fine a day for me to spend cooped up in the house. I'll leave you two young folks to take care of each other. I'm going to read my newspaper in the park. Sunday don't come more than once a week, you understand. By-by, Chris. So long, Mr. Bacharach.”

He went off.

For a while Elias worked in silence. So great was the pleasure that he got from studying this young girl's beauty, and endeavoring to transfer the elements of it to his canvas, that he never thought of how heavily the time might lag for her. But all at once it occurred to him.

“Why,” he reflected, “I'm treating her for all the world as if she were a paid model. This won't do. I must try to amuse her.”

Then he sought high and low for something to say, something that would be at once appropriate and entertaining. In vain. His wits seemed to have deserted him, his mind to have become a total and hopeless blank. In order readily and happily to manufacture polite conversation, one must have had experience. Elias had had none. Now, in despair, he saw himself reduced to taking refuge in the weather.

“This—er—has been an unusually mild fall, Miss Redwood,” he ventured.

“Yes, very,” she acquiesced.

“But the summer—that was a scorcher, wasn't it?”

“Yes, indeed, dreadful,” she assented.

“You spent it in the country, I suppose?”

“Oh, no; we staid in the city.”

“Ah, did you? So did I.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes.”

He waited for her to go on, but she did not go on. With a sense of deep discouragement, he concluded that he had entered a cul-de-sac. He must begin anew, and upon another topic.

Presently, “I hope you are not getting tired,” he said. “Don't hesitate to rest as often as you like.”

“Oh, thank you, no; I'm not tired yet,” she answered.

“Generally,” he announced, standing off, closing one eye, and taking an observation over the end of his crayon, “generally people who aren't used to it, find sitting very irksome; and even regular models, whose business it is, want to get up every now and then, and stretch themselves. But the painter himself never wearies.”

“Because he is so interested in his work, I suppose?”

“Yes, of course. Why, sometimes, of a summer day, I've painted for thirteen or fourteen hours at a stretch—from dawn till sunset—and then only been sorry that I could paint no more.”

“It must be delightful to have an occupation like that—one that is a constant source of pleasure. It's the same, isn't it, with all kinds of artists—with musicians and sculptors?”

“Yes, and writers. I know a man who is a writer—writes stories and poems and that sort of thing—and his wife says she has to use main force to get him to leave his manuscripts. Writers have the advantage of painters in one respect—they don't need daylight. Indeed, I think many of them like lamp-light better. The lamp is sort of emblematic of their calling, just as the palette is of ours. I have read somewhere of quite a celebrated novelist—I forget his name—an Englishman, I believe—who shuts his blinds, and lights the gas, and works by gaslight even in broad day. That's curious, isn't it?”

“And foolish, besides; because they say it's very unhealthful and very bad for the eyes. I should think his novels would be awfully morbid.”

“I used to paint by gaslight when I was at the League. But I don't any more. It doesn't pay. In the daytime your colors all look false and unwholesome—hectic—as if they had the consumption. Of course, if you're merely sketching, or working in black and white, it's different.”

“Did you study at the League?”

“Yes; and also under Stainar, in his studio.”

“Stainar? At Paris?”

“Oh, no; in New York. What little I know I have learned here in New York.”

“Why, I thought every body had to study abroad—at Paris or Munich or Düsseldorf.”

“They don't exactly have to. You can get very good instruction here. Stainar is a capital master; and there are others. Of course, it's desirable to study abroad, too. But I couldn't very well. I have never been further than fifty or a hundred miles from this city in my life.”

“Why, how strange! I haven't either. But then, I'm a girl. You're a man. I should think you would have traveled.”

“It was on account of my mother. She was a great stay-at-home; and I never felt like leaving her. Since her death—two years ago—I haven't had any wish to travel. I haven't had the heart for it.”

After a little pause, Christine asked softly, “Have you any brothers or sisters?”

“No, none. And my father died when I was a baby. So, except for me, my mother was quite alone. To be sure, she had my uncle, the rabbi; but he's not much company.”

“Oh, have you an uncle who is a rabbi?”

“Yes—Dr. Gedaza, of the Congregation Gates of Pearl, in Seventeenth Street.”

“How interesting! Tell me, what is he like?”

“Why, I don't know. How do you mean?”

“What does he look like? And his character?”

“Well, he's a little old gentleman, a widower. He wears spectacles, and he's got a bald head. He knows an' awful lot of theology, but in point of worldly wisdom he's as deficient as a child. Sometimes he's fairly good-natured, sometimes very severe. Generally he's absent-minded—up in the clouds.”

“Has he a long white beard?”

“He has a beard; but it's neither long nor white. It's short and black—though there may be a few white hairs scattered through it. There ought to be, considering his age. He's—Let me see. He's ten years older than my mother; and she was thirty years older than I. That would make him sixty-six.”

“I have never seen a rabbi; but I always thought they had long white beards, and wore gowns, and looked mysterious and awe-inspiring, like astrologers or alchemists.”

“There's nothing mysterious about my uncle,” said Elias, laughing, “unless it be his prodigious learning; and nothing awe-inspiring, except his temper. That's pretty quick. He wears an ordinary black coat and white cravat, like a Protestant minister's. You'd take him for a Protestant minister if you should pass him in the street.”

“And he isn't at all patriarchal or picturesque?”

“Alas, no; not that I have been able to discover.”

“Oh, dear; how disappointing!”

After another little pause, Christine said: “I haven't any brothers or sisters, either; and my mother died when I was three years old; and my father is a great home-body, too. Isn't it strange that our lives should have been so much alike? Only, you're a man and an artist; and I'm a girl and have nothing to do but to keep house. I wish I loved housekeeping as you do painting. But I don't; I hate it.”

“That's too bad. But then, it doesn't take up all your time, and it doesn't cause you such an endless deal of worry and discouragement as painting does. You have plenty of time left in which to read, and see your friends, and enjoy life.”

“Oh, no, I don't. You have no idea how many miserable little things there are to be done. And we only keep one servant. And she's so stupid that I have to be standing over her all day long. It's like a regular business—almost.”

She had thrown a good deal of feeling into these utterances; had emphasized them by bending forward, and lifting her face toward her hearer's; and by this time she was completely out of pose.

Didn't she think she'd like to rest a little now? Elias asked.

She thought she would like to, for a few minutes, she said; and getting up, she crossed over and looked at Elias's canvas. All she could see were a few straggling charcoal lines.

“Oh,” she queried, “is that the way you begin?”

“Yes; I must sketch every thing in in black, first.”

“But how long will that take?”

“That depends upon how often you let me come.”

“Well, if you come every Sunday?”

“Oh, it will take three or four weeks—may be more.”

“And then, how long before the picture will be finished?”

“I can't tell exactly; but if we only have one sitting a week, probably not till spring.”

“Oh,” she said, and said it with an inflection which Elias construed to be that of disappointment.

“Why, did you wish to have it finished earlier?” he asked.

“Oh, no; I don't care about that. I wasn't thinking of that,” she answered, but still with an inflection which made Elias feel that her contentment had been disturbed. He wondered whether he had said any thing indiscreet, any thing to hurt or to offend her. He could remember nothing.

She resumed her pose. He could not have told what it was, but there was something in her bearing which prompted him to ask: “Is the position uncomfortable?” and to urge: “Don't sit any more to-day, if you would rather not.”

“Oh, no; the position isn't uncomfortable. I'd just as soon sit,” was her reply, in the same unhappy tone of voice.

Now, what could the matter be? What had happened to annoy her?

“Please, Miss Redwood,” Elias pleaded, “please be frank with me. Perhaps I am keeping you from something?”

Her eyes were fixed dreamily upon the window-pane behind his shoulder.

“I was only thinking,” she confessed in a slow, pensive manner, “of what a beautiful day it is, and that”—She stopped herself.

“And that—”

“That's all. Nothing else.”

“Oh, yes, there was. Please tell me. And that—?”

“And that—now the winter is upon us—that we shan't have many more like it. There.”

“Ah, I see! And you were longing to be out of doors, enjoying it. No wonder.”

She colored up and began protesting.

“Oh, really, Mr. Bacharach; no, indeed—”

“Oh, yes, you were. No use denying it. And so far as I'm concerned, I've done a good morning's work already. And, I propose that we go and join your father in the park—if you know where to find him?”

“Oh, yes, I know where to find him. Shall I put on my things? One sitting, more or less—if it's going to take so very, very long—won't count, will it?”

A few moments later they had entered the park, and were sauntering down a sunlit pathway. Christine's hair glowed like a web of fine flames. Roses bloomed in her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled. She vowed that there had never before been such a delicious day. How soft the air was, and yet how crisp! How sweet it smelled! How exquisitely the leafless branches of the trees, gilded by the sunshine, were penciled against the deep blue of the sky! The sunshine transfigured every thing. What rich and varied colors it brought out upon the landscape! What reds, what purples, what yellows! Had Mr. Bacharach ever seen any thing equal to it? Was it not a keen pleasure merely to breathe, merely to exist, upon such a day? By and by they turned a corner, and came upon a bench.

“Oh,” exclaimed Christine, halting abruptly, “he's not here.”

“Who?” Elias asked.

“Why, my father.”

“Oh, to be sure; I had forgotten.”

“This is his favorite bench. He always sits here. Now, what can have become of him?”

“Perhaps he has walked on a little.”

“I suppose he has. But he can't have gone far. He never does. We'll soon overtake him.”

At the end of another quarter hour, however, they had not yet overtaken him.

“I'm afraid we've missed him,” she said; “though it's very strange, because he never goes anywhere else, but just in this direction. I think we may as well give up the search. But I'm a little tired, and would you mind sitting down and resting for a moment before turning back?”

“I should like nothing better; only, I must warn you that I haven't the remotest notion how we are to find our way out of here. The paths we have taken have been so crooked, I've entirely lost my reckoning.”

“Ah, but I—I know the park by heart. I could find my way anywhere in it, blindfold, I think.”

“Indeed? How did you get so well acquainted?”

“Oh, we've lived within a stone's throw of it all my life. When I was a little girl I used to play here. Then I had to cross it twice a day, when I went to the Normal College. And since then I've made a practice of taking long walks here every afternoon. There's scarcely a tree or stone that I'm not familiar with; and I've discovered lots of delightful little places—nooks and corners—that nobody else suspects the existence of. Sometime I'd like to show you some of them. They'd be splendid to paint.”

By this time they were seated.

“Oh, thank you,” said Elias, “that will be charming. And so, you went to the Normal College?”

“Yes; I graduated there last spring.”

“Graduated! Why, I shouldn't have thought you were old enough!”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Seventeen?”

“Oh, ever so much older. Guess again.”

“Eighteen, then?”

“I'll be nineteen in January—January third—just one month from to-day.”

“Mercy! You're very venerable, to be sure. And then, having graduated from the Normal College, what an immense deal of wisdom you must possess, too!”

She laughed as gayly as though he had perpetrated a rare witticism; and then said, “No, seriously, I never learned much at the Normal College—I mean in the classes—except a lot of mathematics and Latin, which I've forgotten all about now. I learned a little from the other girls, though. Some of them were wonderfully intelligent and cultivated; and they put me on the track of good books and such things. Shall we start home now?” (They rose and began to retrace their steps.) “Tell me, Mr. Bacharach, what is the one book which you like best of all?”

“That's rather a hard question. Suppose I were to put it to you, could you answer it?”

“Oh, yes. I think 'Adam Bede' is the greatest book that was ever written.”

“That's saying a vast deal, isn't it?”

“Well, of course, I mean the greatest book of its kind—the most vivid and truthful picture of real deep feeling. I wasn't thinking of scientific books, or essays, or histories, like Spencer, or Emerson, or Macaulay. I mean, it pierces-deeper into the heart, than any other book that I have read.”

“Have you ever read 'Wilhelm Meister?'”

“No. I was going to, though. One of the girls lent me a copy—-Carlyle's translation. She said it was splendid. But when my father saw it he made me give it back. He holds very old-fashioned ideas of literature, you know; and he says that Goethe is demoralizing. His taste in music is old-fashioned, too. He never will take me to hear good music. It bores him dreadfully. He likes to go to grand sacred concerts on Sunday evening, where they play Strauss and Offenbach, and then at the end 'Home, Sweet Home.' Strauss and Offenbach and even 'Home, Sweet Home' are very well of their kind; but one tires of them after a while, don't you think so? I haven't been at a Symphony or Philharmonic for more than a year.”

“Why don't you go to the rehearsals?”

“Why, he won't take me to the rehearsals, any more than to the concerts.”

“But you can go to them alone. They're in the afternoon.”

“Oh, but I can't bear to hear music alone. I I must have somebody with me, or else I don't enjoy it at all. I always want somebody to nudge, when the music is especially thrilling; don't you?”

“Yes, one longs for a sympathetic neighbor,” Elias admitted; and thought in his own soul, “I wish the old man would deputize me; it must be exceedingly pleasant to be nudged by her little elbow.”

When they had reached the house, Christine asked him whether he wouldn't come in for a little while; and he replied that he guessed he would, for the purpose of putting away his paraphernalia, which he had left cluttering up the parlor. Inside they found old Redwood, who explained that he had departed from his custom that morning, and chosen quite a different quarter of the park for his outing. Elias stowed his things under the piano. As he was doing so, a bell rang below stairs.

“Dinner,” announced the old man. “Come, Mr. Bacharach.”

Elias began to make his excuses.

“Oh, none o' that!” the old man cried, grasping Elias's arm. “Come down and take pot-luck; and may good digestion wait on appetite.”

Pretty soon Elias found himself installed at Redwood's table, with Christine beaming upon him from one end, and the old man carving a turkey at the other.

“Well, I declare, Chris, this is quite jolly, ain't it? To have company to dinner! We two—she and I, Mr. Bacharach—we generally dine alone; and as we've told each other about all either of us knows, time and time again, we don't find it particularly lively; do we, Chris? Now, Mr. Bacharach, I know that you Israelites—excuse me—you foreigners—don't drink ice-water with your meals; but as I haven't got any wine to offer you, I'll send out for some beer. Mary!”

The maid appeared; and old Redwood instructed her to purchase a quart of beer at the corner liquor store. “You'll have to go in by the side-door, Mary, because it's Sunday. And if any policeman should ask what you've got in the pitcher, tell him it's milk. Don't be afraid. If he takes you up, I'll go bail for you. Ha-ha-ha!”

“Father!” cried Christine, with a glance at once beseeching and reproachful.

“Beer,” the old man continued, moderating his hilarity, and adopting a commentative tone, “beer is a great drink, mild, refreshing, wholesome. And it's done a sight of good for temperance, too—more than all your total abstinence orators and blue-rib-bonites put together. I'm very fond of it, and always drink it with my lunch, down-town. There's a saloon just under my shop. But Chris there, she can't abide it, on account of the bitter. She likes wine—and wine—not being a capitalist—I call an extravagance.”

“Yes,” said Christine, “I think wine is perfectly delicious; and so pretty to look at, with its deep red or yellow. Once a friend of father's sent us a whole box of wine—Rhine wine—and——”

“And,” old Redwood interrupted, “and that innocent appearing young woman there, sir, she disposed of every blessed drop of it; she did, for a fact. What do you think of that?”

“Oh, father,” protested Christine, blushing beautifully, “you ought not to say such a thing. Mr. Bacharach might believe you.”

“Well, any how, I wish we had some of it left to offer you, Mr. Bacharach,” said Redwood. “But here comes the beer.”

“Oh, by the way,” put in Elias, addressing himself to Christine, “did you know? They're going to give the 'Damnation of Faust' at the Symphony rehearsal Friday afternoon—the great work of Berlioz. Have you ever heard it?”

“No; but I have heard selections from it. I wish”—bringing her eyes to bear upon her father—“I wish I could go.”

“Well, why don't ye? Who's to prevent ye?”

“Will you take me?”

“Not I. But, Great Scott, what's the use of being a pretty young girl if you've got to drag your aged father around after you? Why don't you get some young man? I'll bet there are twenty young fellows in this town, who'd only be too glad. But she, Mr. Bacharach, she scares them all away, with her high and mighty manners. She's too particular. She'll die an old maid, mark my words.”

Elias caught a glimpse of a golden opportunity. “I wish, Miss Redwood, I wish you would go with me,” he ventured, a little timidly, and waited anxiously for her response.

“There you are, Chris!” cried her father. “There's your chance! But”—turning to Elias—“but she won't. You see if she will.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Bacharach? That's lovely. I'll go with the very greatest pleasure.”

Her eyes lighted up; and leaving her seat, she ran around the table, and deposited a wholly irrelevant kiss upon her father's forehead.

“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed that gentleman, clapping his hands. “You're the first young fellow I've seen, Mr. Bacharach, who she thought was good enough for her. By George, Chris, there's hope for you, after all.”

“Oh,” cried Christine, “I'm so glad. I never wanted any thing more in my life, than I did to hear the—the—it sounds awfully profane, doesn't it?—'Damnation of Faust.'”

“Well, now,” said the old man, “there's nothing like killing two birds with one stone. So what I propose is this: I propose that you come up here Friday forenoon, Mr. Bacharach; and then you can work for a while at her portrait. Afterward she'll give you a bite of lunch—won't ye, Chris?—and you can tote her off to the concert. By the way, where does it take place? At the Academy?”

“No; at Steinway Hall.”

“And when does it let out?”

“At about half-past four, I think.”

“All right. Then I'll meet you at the door when it's over—my shop, you know, is just around the corner—I'll meet you at the door and save you the trouble of bringing her home. How does that suit, eh?”

“Very well,” said Elias; but he thought that he should not have minded the trouble of bringing her home.

When he returned to the quiet, dark house on Stuyvesant Square, late that afternoon, he sat down at the big window of his studio, and went over the happenings of the day. He felt wonderfully lighthearted, wonderfully elated, as though he had drunken of some subtle stimulant. What a pleasant, interesting city New York was, after all! How thoroughly one could enjoy one's self in it! The noises of it, mingling in a confused, continuous rumble, and falling upon his ears, sounded like the voice of a good old friend. It was an old friend's face that greeted him, as he looked out upon the bare trees in the park. Every now and then he drew a deep, tremulous, audible breath. The colors faded from the sky. Dusk gathered. The bell of St. George's Church rang to vespers. The street lamps were lighted. It got dark. Elias did not stir.

“Oh, what a sweet, natural, beautiful girl!” he was soliloquizing. “And what a rough old bear of a father! And what—what a heavenly time we'll have on Friday!”

He marveled at himself, it gave him such a swift, exultant thrill to think of Friday; but the obvious psychological explanation of it, he never once suspected.

IV.

TOWARD the close of Friday's sitting Elias said: “You know, Berlioz has taken great liberties with Goethe's text—quite altered the story, indeed, and given it an ending to suit himself.”

“That won't matter much to me,” responded Christine, “because I've never read 'Faust,' and I have only the vaguest notion of what the story is.”

“Did it suffer a like fate to 'Wilhelm Meister's?'”

“No; but I can't read German, and I didn't know whether there was any good translation. Is there?”

“Oh, yes; 'Bayard Taylor's is beautiful. You ought to read it.”

“Then, besides, I had an idea that it was very deep and obscure—very hard to understand. Do you think I could understand it?”

“I'm sure you could—all that's essential. You could get the story and the human nature. I believe you'd find it even more moving than 'Adam Bede.'”

“Can't you tell me the story? Won't you tell it to me now?”

“Oh, I should only spoil it.”

But Christine begged him to give her the outline of it, pleading that she would enjoy the music so much more intelligently if she were not altogether ignorant of the plot. So, during their luncheon, Elias related as best he could something of the love-story of Faust and Margaret. Christine listened with bated breath, and wide eyes fastened upon his face; and at its conclusion she drew a profound sigh, and murmured: “Oh, how sad, how sad!”

“Now,” said Elias, “I must explain how Berlioz has tampered with it.” Which he proceeded to do.

They walked as far as Seventh Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, where they took the University Place car. Elias thought he had never been so happy. It was an exhilaration merely to share this young girl's presence, breathing the same air that she breathed. The sunshine caught new radiance from her hair. Lambent fires burned in her eyes. There was no music that Elias would rather have heard, than the music of her voice as she talked to him. They had the car to themselves for the first few blocks; but then it began to fill up with ladies, and at last chivalry compelled Elias to sacrifice his seat at Christine's side. He clung to the strap in front of her, and looked down at her; and she looked up at him; and so, with their glances, they communed together, very rarely opening their lips, until, having reached Fourteenth Street, it behooved them to dismount.

The music began. Christine sat forward in her chair, and listened with manifest appreciation. But she made no sign to her companion till the musicians had played, and the chorus sung, the first bar or two of the “Peasants' Rondo.” Then she turned upon him suddenly, with eyes dilated and lips apart, and drew a quick breath, and uttered an ecstatic little “Oh!” The syllable sped straight to his heart, and started an unfamiliar palpitation there. From that moment until the concert was terminated, both of these young people were in Heaven; she, thanks to the marvelous music, which seized hold of her, and bore her away, like a blossom upon its bosom: he, thanks to the beautiful girl who was seated next to him, and whose eyes kept smiling into his, and whose breath for one priceless second fell upon his cheek. Every most trifling incident of that afternoon somehow engraved itself upon Elias Bacharach's memory. Long afterward he recalled it all: how Christine was dressed, the shape of her bonnet, the color of her gloves, the fragrance of the rose that she wore in her breast; how he had wrapped her cloak about her shoulders when she complained of a draught; how she had beat time with her fan when the students sang their drinking song, and laughed when Brander sang the ballad of the rat, and looked grave when Gretchen sang “There was a King in Thule,” and started, and paled, and caught her breath, and put her hand impulsively upon Elias's arm, when Faust and Mephistopheles began their tempestuous ride into hell. He remembered it all, in exceeding bitterness of spirit. He would have followed Faust's example, and pledged his soul to eternal bondage, gladly, eagerly, if by doing so he could have won back the possibilities of that vanished afternoon.

Old Redwood met them, as he had promised, on the curbstone in front of the exit.

“You'd better come up town and dine with us, Mr. Bacharach,” he said.

“Oh, yes; do, please,” urged Christine.

“I wish I could,” said Elias; “but, unfortunately, I must go home. The concert has lasted longer than I thought it would; and now they—my uncle, I mean—will be expecting me at home. Good-by.”

Christine gave him her hand. He watched her till she was lost to sight in the crowd. It had cost him a pang to separate himself from her. Now, as he saw her departing further and further away, it was like the gradual extinction of the light and the warmth and the beauty of the day. His heart sank. A lump began to gather and ache in his throat. He turned about and walked slowly home.

Crossing his own threshold, he shivered, as one might upon entering a tomb. Somehow, his house seemed darker, bleaker, bigger, and more cheerless than it had ever seemed before. It was, as it always was, intensely silent. His footstep upon the marble floor of the hallway resounded sharp and metallic. He joined the rabbi in the latter's study. They exchanged a few quiet words of greeting, and then sat motionless, without speaking, as though waiting for something to happen..The daylight slowly faded. By and by a star could be made out, shimmering through the window. Both of these men rose to their feet, and put on their hats. The rabbi lighted a candle, and, with hands uplifted, intoned a blessing over it in Hebrew. With the candle flame he lighted the gas. Then, picking up a bulky calf-bound volume from the table, he began to read aloud from the Thorah, also in Hebrew. Elias paid scant heed. He heard the rabbi's voice rise and fall in sonorous periods; but his heart and his mind were elsewhere.

“Now, Elias,” said the rabbi suddenly, “you read on from where I have left off.”

He handed Elias the book, pointing with his finger to the place. Elias took it, and read mechanically, pronouncing the words clearly enough, but giving no attention to the sense:

“And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them. Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy. son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods; so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly. But thus shall ye deal with them: Ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire. For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.'” *

* Deuteronomy, vii., 2-6.

“'Above all people that are upon the face of the earth,'” echoed the rabbi. “Amen.”.

With the melancholy December nightfall had come the Jewish Sabbath.

V.

THOUGH nothing had been said about it, Elias took for granted that the Redwoods would expect him Sunday morning; and accordingly, in the neighborhood of nine o'clock, he rang their door-bell. He found them ready for him. Old Redwood sat behind him as he worked at the portrait, and conversation was general throughout. They asked him to stay to dinner, but he was afraid of abusing his welcome, and declined. He went home, shut himself up in his studio, and spent the afternoon thinking regretfully of the good time that he might have been having if he had only accepted.

The first post Monday morning brought him a ticket for the private view of the Academy exhibition to be given that evening. The ticket said, “Admit Mr. E. Bacharach and one.” Elias went to his writing-desk, and, on the spur of his impulse, wrote the following note:

“No.— East Fifteenth Street, Monday.

“My Dear Miss Redwood:—I wonder whether you would care to attend the private view of the coming exhibition this evening? There will no doubt be quite an interesting lot of people there, not to mention the pictures; and perhaps it might amuse you to look in for an hour or so. If you will say yes, I shall be very glad.

“Yours sincerely,

“Elias Bacharach.”

This he inclosed in an envelope, and addressed. Then he sallied forth to the nearest messenger office, and had it sent. Then he returned to his studio to await her answer.

But pretty soon he began to repent what he had done. Surely, upon such brief acquaintance, he had taken too great a liberty. What sort of an opinion would she have of him? Of course, she would say no to his invitation. Oh that he could recall the note—the rash, impetuous note! It was too late to do that; and now he must suffer the consequence of his indiscretion, which would at least be a fall of great distance in her esteem. She would regard him as presumptuous and pushing. She would laugh at him to herself, and with her father, to whom most likely she would show what he had written. Perhaps she would imagine that he was in love with her—girls are notorious for imagining such ridiculous things upon such slight provocation. He, certainly, would never have the hardihood to look her straight in the face again. He walked up and down the floor. Why didn't the messenger bring her answer? Though he knew, or thought he knew, that it would be a snub and a refusal, he was anxious to get it, all the same. Would the boy never come? Was he purposely delaying? Taking a malicious delight in making his employer wait? Stopping upon some street-corner to spin his top? Or—or had she simply disdained to vouchsafe to his request any reply whatever?—— Ah! The door-bell! Elias's heart jumped into his mouth. He stepped into the hall, leaned over the banister, and listened.

He heard the maid undo the chain, and open the door. There was an interval of silence. Then he heard her shut it. Then, in a voice tense for excitement, “Maggie,” he called, “is it something for me?”

“Yes, sir; a note.”

He ran down stairs, and met the servant half-way. She gave him the note. “Mr. Elias Bacharach, No.— East Fifteenth Street, N. Y. C.,” was its superscription, in a pretty, girlish hand. The paper had a faint, sweet smell—something like jasmine, something like mignonnette. He carried it back to his studio, unopened. There, having closed the door, he went to his window, drew a long breath, and with trembling fingers broke the seal. Could he believe his senses? Christine's note ran thus:

“Dear Mr. Bacharach:—Thanks ever so much, and I shall be delighted to go. I have always wanted to go to a private view, but have never been. I hope there are some of your pictures to be seen; are there? You don't tell me at what hour to expect you; but I'll be ready at half-past seven. Sincerely yours,

“Christine Redwood.”

Elias's cheeks burned, his fingers trembled, his temples throbbed, he could feel the blood leap in his veins, as the meaning of this document became apparent to his mind. He read it again and again. He brought it close to his face, and breathed the dainty perfume it exhaled. The pleasure he derived from doing this was wholly disproportionate to the sweetness of the scent. By and by he put it back in its envelope, and deposited it in the drawer of his desk. But he did not leave it there long. In a little while he had it out, and was reading it again, and again inhaling its perfume—which, faint to begin with, had now almost quite evaporated. Still, enough of it remained to send an electric tingle along his nerves, and to cast a wonderfully vivid image of Christine upon the retina of his mind's eye. For the rest of that day he was incompetent. He could not paint. He could not read. He could not sit still. He could only roam listlessly from place to place, and wonder whether half-past seven would ever arrive.

At twenty minutes past seven precisely, as he learned from his watch, he found himself at the foot of Redwood's stoop. No: he had traveled on the speed of his desire; it would not do to be beforehand. The ten eternal minutes that lay between him and the appointed time he would while away by walking around the block. He walked slowly, trying to calculate just how many seconds, or fractions of a second, were consumed by each step. At last he had regained his starting point. He mounted the stoop, and rang the bell.

The parlor was empty. Elias picked up Christine's volume of Rossetti, and absent-mindedly turned the pages. Oh, at what a break-neck pace his arteries were beating.

Hark! He heard a light footstep coming down the stairs. He rose. All at once, it seemed to him, there was a burst of sunlight and oxygen. She had entered. She was standing before him, smiling and bidding him welcome. She had on a tiny bonnet of dark red velvet, under which her golden hair, and her lily-white forehead, and her deep brown eyes, shone at their best. She carried her wrap over her arm—a fur-lined circular. In her left hand she held her gloves. Her right she gave to Elias. His heart fluttered to the verge of fainting as he touched it. How small it was; how warm and soft! How confidingly it seemed to nestle in his! By a mighty effort he subdued an impulse to carry it to his lips and kiss it. He had no idea of letting it go, and perhaps would have continued to hold it to this day, if she by and by had not drawn it away.

“Here are a couple of roses,” he said, handing her a tissue-paper parcel.

She took them, and marveled at their loveliness. She fastened one to her dress, and forced him to wear the other in the lapel of his coat. She stood on tip-toe and pinned it there. The trimming of her bonnet brushed, his cheek. It was an instant of intoxication. He wondered whether she could hear his heart beat.

“It was kind of you to say that you would go. I was afraid you might not care to,” he began.

“On the contrary, it was kind of you to ask me. I am very glad.”

She sat down, and drew on her gloves. He saw that she was having difficulty in buttoning one of them.

“Can't I help you?” he asked.

Then he held her hand, and buttoned her glove for her, and breathed the incense that rose from the flower at her breast. Then he wrapped her in her circular; and they left the house. He offered her his arm. Her little hand perched like a bird upon it.

“I am so happy,” he said softly, and immediately regretted that he had said it.

“So am I,” she said, still more softly; and straightway his regret died.

He looked into her eyes. Far down in them palpitated a mystic, tender light. Elias had to bite his tongue to keep from telling her then and there that he loved her.

At the exhibition he pointed out the distinguished people to her, and showed her the pictures which he thought were the best, and was happy, happy, happy. Now and then somebody would nod and say: “How d'ye do, Bacharach?” and cast an admiring glance at his companion, which stirred his pride. Once a gentleman stopped and spoke a few words to Christine, and won a smile from her, which pricked his jealousy. He feared that it was not at all the proper thing to do, but he could not help asking, “A friend of yours?”

“Oh, no,” she answered; “only our old drawing teacher at the Normal College.” At that he was happy again. She wanted him to lead her straight to his own picture at once. By and by they had reached it. The subject was “The Song of Deborah.” The prophetess was represented as a woman of about fifty years of age, tall, stalwart, imperious-looking, with iron-gray hair, steel-blue eyes, and a head of stern and majestic beauty. Christine thought the coloring was superb, and, “Where did you ever find such a wonderful face?” she asked. “It is a face to make you afraid, it's so strong, so proud; and yet it is a face that you could not help loving; there is something so good about it. Oh, I like it the best of all the pictures here.” Elias felt that he had not worked in vain.

There was a great crush of people, and the air was close and hot, and the few seats where one might rest one's self were all occupied; so presently Elias asked whether she wasn't tired, and she confessed that she was—a little; and they left the building.

“Now,” said he, “it's still early, and I for one am ravenously hungry.”

“Oh, are you? That's too bad,” was her guileless response. “But at home I shall be able to give you”—timidly—“some—some cold turkey.”

“No,” he said, “I shan't put you to that trouble. Let's go to a restaurant.”

And he led her to Delmonico's.

There, the momentous question, what they had better order, occasioned much grave debate, and resulted finally in the selection of a sweet-bread garnished by green peas. Elias thought that Beaune would be the wine best adapted to moistening a sweet-bread, and accordingly Beaune was brought, as Christine remarked curiously, “in a little basket.” She applied herself to the edibles with undisguised relish; but all at once, pausing and looking reproachfully at Elias, she exclaimed, “Why, you said you were ravenously hungry, and now you're not eating a thing!” Indeed, she spoke the truth. His knife and fork lay unemployed beside his plate; and he was doing nothing but gaze at her with fond, caressing eyes.

“Oh, I forgot,” he said, and began to eat and drink.

They chatted busily during the repast—about the people who came and went, about the marvelous toilets of some of the ladies, about the decorations of the restaurant, about the haughty mien and supercilious manner of the French gentleman in evening dress who served them, about the view of electric-lighted Madison Square that they got through the window at which they were established—about a thousand trifles. Afterward Elias preserved but a very dim remembrance of the words that they had spoken. He preserved a very vivid one of Christine's appearance—of how her eyes had glowed beneath her red bonnet, of how the rose he had given her had shone like a spot of flame in her bosom—and of the bliss that he had experienced in sitting opposite her, and watching the varying expressions of her face, hearkening to the varying modulations of her voice, and realizing that she was trusting herself entirely to his protection.

Again by and by he had the privilege of helping her on with her circular, and of buttoning her glove. They got into a street car to go up town. The first half of that journey Elias found delightful. They had to sit very close together, to make room for other passengers; and all the while Elias was conscious of the touch of her shoulder upon his arm. But, as he saw the end drawing near, and knew that the moment was not far off when he would have to leave her, his spirits began to sink. Why could not the distance be doubled, trebled? What possessed the driver to race his horses so? Surely, street car had never covered its tracks at such reckless speed before. He rang her door-bell for her, and tried to harden himself to the thought that in another minute he would have to say good-by.

Old Redwood himself answered the door-bell.

“Come in for a moment, Mr. Bacharach, and get thawed out,” he said.

Elias breathed freely. Here was a reprieve, at any rate. They went into the back parlor, and gathered around a cheerful grate fire. Christine gave her father an account of the evening's doings. At last Elias screwed his courage up, and tore himself away. Christine went with him to the vestibule. He got hold of her hand, and clung to it for the entire five minutes that it took him to pronounce his valedictory.

Body burning, brain whirling, as if with fever, he walked home. A wild joy trembled in his heart; a wild pain, too. He loved her. To-night, at last, for the first time, he had recognized this very palpable and patent fact. He loved her. There could be no doubt about it. With a sensation of genuine surprise, the simple fellow acknowledged to himself that he loved her—with genuine surprise and consternation. Perhaps some time she might love him a little in return. But even so, he knew that between her and himself there yawned a gulf, fathomless and impassable; and in spite of his desire and his passion, he cried out, “God forbid!”

He let himself into the house with his latch-key. Through the glass door of his uncle's study, at the end of the hall, he could see that a light was still burning within. He threw off his hat and overcoat, and marched into the rabbi's presence.

“How that good man would start,” he thought, “if he should guess!”

VI.

THE rabbi's study was a bare enough apartment, furnished with a faded carpet, three or four chairs, and a writing table. The walls and ceiling were kalsomined in slate color, the former being lined half-way up with book shelves. A student's lamp, with a green shade, burned on the table. The oil in it must have been pretty low, for it shed but a dim light, and gave off a strong, offensive odor. The rabbi sat with his back to the door, bending over what looked like a manuscript sermon. The top of the rabbi's head was perfectly bald, and it reflected the lamplight like a surface of polished ivory. His little remaining hair and his beard were bluish black. His eyes, behind thick spectacles, were black, too—small, deep-set, bright, restless black beads. But his skin was intensely white, as white almost as the clerical collar that encircled his throat, and it looked as though it would feel chilly to the touch, like marble. The rabbi was a very little man, short of stature, spare of habit, with a frame and with features as slender and as delicate as a maiden's. Yet he had not at all the appearance of a weakling. You felt at once the presence of a strong will and of an active, if not enlightened or profound, intelligence. You felt the presence of a person who could, if he chose, be sufficiently good-natured, but who possessed also the capacity of becoming as hard and as cold as ice.

At his nephew's entrance the rabbi glanced over his shoulder.

“Ah, Elias,” he asked, in a tone which, though amiable, denoted very little interest, “where do you come from?”

“The Academy of Design. I've been at the exhibition.”

“So? Have you any pictures there?”

“Only one. 'The Song of Deborah.'”

“Ah! Is it well hung?”

“Oh, yes—on the line.”

“That's good. Some day I must drop in and see it.”

On both sides the dialogue had been perfunctory. Now there befell a silence. The rabbi returned to his reading. Elias sank upon a chair, thrust his hands deep into his trowsers pockets, and fixed his eyes upon the carpet. For a while the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece was the only sound.

All at once Elias said: “Oh, yes—I forgot—I've been at Delmonico's, too.”

“Ah,” rejoined the rabbi, “eating trepha food.”

“I ate neither pork nor shellfish,” Elias submitted. “I ate a bit of sweet-bread. Of course it hadn't been killed kosher. But is that such a great sin? Some of our most pious Jews go to Delmonico's. To-night, indeed, I saw Judge Nathan there, with his wife and daughters; and he's president of his congregation.”

“Small sins beget larger ones. It's better not to commit even peccadillos,” said the rabbi. “And eating trepha food isn't merely a peccadillo. However, you're of full age. It's not my place to call you to account.”

“Speaking of sins, Uncle Felix,” Elias presently went on, “tell me, what is the worst sin that a Jew could commit?”

The rabbi's eyes had strayed back to his manuscript. Lifting them, “How?” he queried.

Elias repeated his question.

“Why,” said the rabbi, “there are the ten commandments, which you know as well as I do. They're of equal force. Theft, adultery, murder—one is as bad as another.”

“That isn't exactly what I meant. I meant the worst sin which a Jew, as a Jew, could commit—the worst infraction of the Thorah as it applies peculiarly to Israel. The ten commandments embody the common law of morality, which is as binding upon Christians as it is upon Jews.”

“Oh,” said the rabbi, “that's another question.”

“Would it be, for example, the desecration of Yom Kippur?”

“The desecration of Yom Kippur would be a deadly sin; so would the desecration of the Sabbath; so would disobedience to parental authority. But the most deadly of all, in my opinion, would be a forbidden marriage.”

“That is, marriage with a Christian?”

“Yes—with a Gentile, a Goy—with any one not of our own race.”

“That, you think, is the one sin which would be most unpardonable in the sight of the Lord? For which He would inflict the severest punishment?”

“Yes, I think so. And it's rather odd that we should speak of this just now, for at the moment when you came in I was reading a sermon on the very subject—a sermon written by your own greatgrandfather, the Reverend Abraham Bacharach, of New Orleans, the first of your family who came to America. I was reading a sermon that he preached at the excommunication of a young man of his congregation, who had married a Frenchwoman, a Catholic. Here it is.”

The rabbi pointed to the manuscript that lay upon his table.

“Indeed?” questioned Elias. “What does he say?”

“Oh, he agrees with me, that it is absolutely the most deadly of sins. He denounces it with a good deal of energy. There's one paragraph here somewhere that struck me as especially fine. Would you like to hear it?”

“Yes, I shouldn't mind,” Elias assented.

The rabbi picked up the manuscript and began to run over the pages, searching for the place.

“Ah, I've got it,” he said at last. “It comes just after a statement of the circumstances, as a sort of summing up. It's in German. Shall I read the original or translate?”

“Translate, if you will.”

The rabbi cleared his throat, brought the manuscript close to his eyes, knitted his brows and proceeded thus:

“Well, it runs this way: 'He has defied the law of the Lord our God. Let him tremble and be afraid. He has dishonored the memory of his ancestors; he has besmirched the name of his family; he has broken the tie that bound him to his kinsfolk; he has sent the father that begot him, and the mother that bore and suckled him, weeping on the way to their graves. Oh, let him cast down his face and be ashamed. To his brothers and sisters, to those who were his friends and loved him, to the rabbi, the chazzan, the parnass, and the people of this congregation, and to all faithful Jews from one end of the earth to the other, he is as one who has died a disgraceful death. The anger of the Most High shall single him out. His cup shall be filled to the brim with gall and wormwood. The light of the sun shall be extinguished for him. A curse shall rest upon him and upon all that concerns him. His wife shall become as a sore in his flesh. With a scolding tongue she shall be-shrew him. As a wanton, she shall shame him.

“His worldly affairs shall not prosper. Misfortune and calamity shall follow wherever he goes. Whatsoever he puts his hand to, that shall fail. An old man, homeless and friendless, he shall beg his bread from door to door. His intelligence shall decay. He shall be pointed out and jeered at, as a fool that drivels and chatters. His health shall break. His bones shall rot in his body. His eyes shall become running ulcers in their sockets. His blood shall dry up, a fiery poison in his veins. And his seed also shall be afflicted. From generation to generation, a blight shall pursue those that bear his name. For the blood of Israel mixed with the blood of a strange people, is like a sweet wine mixed with aloes. His sons shall be weak of mind and body. His daughters shall be ugly to look upon. To him and to his the Lord our God will show no mercy, even unto the brink of the grave. They shall be as if touched with the leprosy, shunned and despised of all men. To the Goy they will continue to be Jews; but to the Jew they will have become Goym. The Lord our God is a jealous God. His love knoweth no bounds. His wrath is like a great fire that can not be put out. He showereth favors abundantly upon them that love Him and keep His commandments. The iniquity of the fathers He visits upon the children and the children's children, even unto the third and fourth generations. Blessed be the name of the Lord!”

The rabbi had begun this reading in low and matter-of-fact accents; but as he proceeded, his voice had increased in volume and emphasis, and the last words rang forth, loud and resonant, as though they had been addressed to a multitude in the synagogue. The veins in his forehead stood out blue and swollen against the white skin, and behind the thick lenses of his spectacles you could see that his black eyes were flashing fire. He paused for a little, breathing deeply. By degrees the veins in his forehead grew small and smaller, becoming pale, flat lines, like veins in marble. Presently, laying aside the manuscript, “There, Elias,” he added, quietly, “that is what your great-grandfather thought about intermarriage, and I guess there has never been a Bacharach to think differently. I hope there never may be one, I'm sure. Why—why, what makes you so pale?”

“Am I pale? I didn't know it. The denunciation is bitter—terrible. It gave me cold shivers.”

“Yes, terrible, so it is. But not exaggerated. It sounds pretty strong, but it couldn't be called exaggerated. For really it's only a simple statement of the truth, the facts. I'm going to quote it in my own discourse next Sabbath. It's just like every thing else. Break a law, whether it be a law of nature, a law of the land, or the law of God, and you must expect to suffer the consequences, to be punished.”

“Yes, of course. And yet, somehow, it seems as though the punishment ought to be in proportion to the offense. Do you seriously, literally, believe that the Lord would punish such a sin with such frightful, far-reaching penalties?”

“With worse, even. No mere human mind can conceive, much less describe, the fearful forms the Divine vengeance would take. All we can do is to picture to ourselves the worst, and then say: It will be as bad as that, or worse. That's what your grandfather has tried to do here. The Lord has expressed in perfectly plain language His desire that the integrity of Israel should be preserved. That was the purpose for which this world was created and mankind called into existence. Now, to enter into matrimony with a Gentile is such a flagrant setting at naught of the Lord's will—why, common-sense is enough to show the inevitable consequences.”

“But suppose a Jew should love a woman of another race—a Christian, for example; what would you have him do? Leave her? Never see her again? Give her up? If he loved her, no pain that the Lord could inflict would be worse than the pain of that.”

“Hold your tongue, Elias!” the rabbi cried sharply. “What you say is blasphemous, is a denial of the Lord's omnipotence. May the Lord forgive you. No, no. His power to inflict pain, as well as to confer blessings, is measureless. What would I have the Jew do? Why, of course, I would have him give her up, no matter how much the sacrifice might cost him. But the case you put is not likely to arise. Love for a Christian woman never could enter a Jewish heart. Such a sentiment as a Jew might perhaps feel for her would be an unholy passion. She might fascinate his senses, but of true love, she could inspire none at all.”

“And yet, suppose, for the sake of argument, suppose that she could—that she had—that the Jew really did love her with true love, what then?”

“Why, then, as I say, I would have him renounce her, and abstain afterward from any sort of communication with her. I would have him pray, also, that his heart might be cleansed and restored to health; for such love would be a spiritual disease.”

Elias made no answer. The rabbi turned his attention to his lamp, the flame of which was spluttering and palpitating, preparatory to going out.

“Pshaw,” he said, extinguishing it, “I must have forgotten to fill it.”

Then he struck a match, and lighted the gas.

“You have made me hungry and thirsty with so much talking,” he continued. “Now I'm going down stairs to forage for something to eat. Will you come along?”

“No, I guess I'll go to bed,” said Elias. “Good-night.”

But he did not go to bed, nor even to his bed-room.

He went to his studio, and sat down in the dark at the window.

It was a wondrous night—the sky cloudless, the air as clear as crystal. The moon, waning, was up, but out of sight in the south, hidden by the housetops. Its frosty light bathed the prospect, like an ethereal form of dew, as far as eye could see. The branches of the trees were silvered by it. Their shadows were sharply etched upon the turf beneath. The yellow flames of the street lamps flared faint and sickly. The few human beings who now and then passed on the sidewalk opposite, had the appearance of mere black spots in motion. Only the largest of the stars dared to show themselves, and they trembled, and were pale, as if cowed by their luminous rival. In the north-west, the spires of St. George's Church stood in massive profile against the deep, shimmering vault of sky. An impressive outlook, cold, serene, passionless; of a sort to remind one of the magnitude and the inexorableness of the material universe, and of the infinitesimal smallness and insignificance of one's self, and to fill one's mind with solemn doubts and questions. But it had no such effect upon Elias Bacharach. Never had his own self loomed larger in his eyes, never had it more exclusively absorbed his faculties, than at this moment, in the face of this moonlit view.

Elias had been bred in the straitest sect of his religion; a rare thing in this country in these days of radicalism and unbelief. From his earliest boyhood down, his training, his associations, his family life, nearly every influence that had borne upon him, had been of a nature to make him intensely, if not zealously or aggressively, a Jew—to imbue his mind thoroughly with the Jewish faith, and to color his character to its innermost fibers with strong Jewish feelings. Besides, the blood of generations of devout Jews coursed in his veins; it was tinctured through and through with Jewish prejudice and superstition. He had never been sent to school, lest in some wise his Judaism might be weakened by contact with the Christians. His uncle, the rabbi, had taken sole charge of his education. Pride of race had been an integral part of the curriculum. “Never forget that you are a Jew, and remember that the world has no honor to bestow upon you equal to the honor that attaches to your birth. To be born in Israel is more illustrious than to be born a prince; the blood of Israel outranks the blood royal; for the Lord our God created the heavens and the earth, the birds and the beasts, the flowers, the trees, the air, the sunlight, for the especial enjoyment of His chosen and much-beloved people. But remember, too, that if the Lord has vouchsafed to you this great and peculiar privilege, so He will exact from you great and peculiar devotion. Though a Gentile—because the Lord pays no heed to him—may commit certain sinful acts with impunity, for you—upon whom the eye of the Lord rests perpetually—for you to commit them, would entail immediate and awful punishment. Though a Christian, for example—because he is of infinite smallness in the sight of the Lord—may transact business on the Sabbath, if you—a Jew—were to do so, the Lord would surely visit you with some frightful calamity. You might be struck by lightning; you might be afflicted with an incurable disease.” This was the sort of doctrine that had been dinned into Elias Bacharach's ears from the time when he had first begun the studies preparatory to becoming Bar-Mitzvah, and to assuming, as the saying is, the Yoke of the Thorah. Heredity predisposed him to accept it. The occasion had never arisen for him to doubt it, or even to consider it in the light of his own intelligence. He had taken it for granted, just as he had taken his geography and history for granted, just as many wiser people than he, the world over, take their theology for granted every day.

To a Jew such as this, nothing can be more intrinsically repugnant than the idea of marriage with a Christian—or, more accurately, with a Goy, which term is applied equally to all human beings who are not of Jewish faith and lineage. The average Caucasian would pretty certainly hesitate at the idea of marriage with a Mongolian. How much more positive would his hesitation be, if race antipathy were, as it is in the case of the Jews, reenforced by the terrors of a supernatural religion. It is no figure of speech, but a literal statement of the fact, to say that an orthodox Jewish father would rather have his son die than marry outside of Israel. He would prefer a funeral to such a wedding. Indeed, such a wedding would be regarded as equivalent to a funeral. The name of the bridegroom would be published among the names of the dead in the Jewish newspapers. His parents, his brothers and sisters, his nearest relatives, would put on mourning for him; and henceforward, if they should pass him in the street, they would refuse to recognize him. In the synagogue he would be excommunicated and cursed. All pious Jews would be enjoined from holding any intercourse whatever with him; from speaking with him; from buying of him, or selling to him; from giving him food, drink, clothing or shelter; from succoring him in danger or in sickness; even from pronouncing his name. “Be he accursed, and be his name forever accursed among men.” Furthermore, all pious Jews would cherish the conviction that sooner or later the vengeance of the Lord would overtake and overwhelm him. They would predict the direst calamities, the most fearful retribution. Superstition never pays attention to statistics, and is never shaken by them. No conceivable misfortune that can fasten upon a human being in this world, but they would promise it to him. Poverty, disease, disgrace; an adulterous wife; deformed children, unsound of mind and evil of heart; whatever the imagination can depict of horrible and disastrous would inevitably fall to his lot.

In this faith, among these traditions, Elias Bacharach had grown up. For hundreds, for thousands, of years, his ancestors on every side had nourished these superstitions. *

* It would seem hardly necessary, yet it is no more than
fair to say that among the better-educated and more
intelligent Jews in America, orthodoxy of this stripe is not
common. Even among them, notwithstanding, it prevails to a
sufficient extent; and among the ignorant classes it is the
rule. It is a curious circumstance, however, that, in the
majority of cases, those very Jews who have cast quite loose
from their Judaism, and proclaim themselves “free-thinkers,”
“agnostics,” or what not, retain their prejudice against
intermarriage, and even their superstitions anent its
consequences.

And yet, an hour ago, when Elias had taken leave of Christine Redwood, his heart was palpitating with a myriad new and sweet emotions, for which, suddenly, at last, he realized that the right name was love—realized it, as has been said, with surprise and with consternation, for he had been unaccountably blind to his own condition until to-night. And during his walk home he had pictured to himself the exceeding joy that would be his if she should ever come to love him in return. And even now, the light of her eyes still shone in his memory, the scent of her garments still clung in his nostrils, the sound of her voice still vibrated in his ears, the touch of her hand was still warm upon his arm. Even now, as he looked out into the vast moonlit sky, and spoke her name softly to himself, a thrill swept electrically through his body. He loved her, he told himself; and if he could not win her love, if he could not have her for his wife, the world would become a desert to him, his life would be wasted, he would rather die, here, now, at once. Perhaps Christine, too, was at this hour looking out of her window. Perhaps her eyes, as well as his, were filling themselves with the glory of the night. In this fancy, highly improbable as it was, he found much comfort. It was good to think that he and she were enjoying something in common. The moonlight was like a palpable link connecting them, like a gossamer cord stretching between them and binding them together. Would that it might bear a message from him to her, and let her know of the love that was yearning in his bosom. Again he spoke aloud her name, caressing it as it passed his lips. And again his heart thrilled, intoxicated with love and hope.

But all at once his superstition sprang upon him. All at once, like a flash of lightning in the darkness, the fear of the Divine wrath lit up his imagination. Every drop of blood in his body came to a standstill and grew cold. He could feel his flesh creep, his hair rise on end. For a third time he pronounced her name; but this time it escaped like a gasp of pain from between clenched teeth. Why had he ever seen her? Why had he not understood the peril that he was running, and avoided it? Henceforth, at any rate, he would never see her again. He would do as his uncle had said, give her up, tear her from his heart. No matter how hard it might be, he would do it, and so save her and himself from perdition. But the resolution had not taken shape in his mind before Christine's face, pale and pleading, with pathetic, passionate eyes, came up visibly before him; and then he was conscious of nothing but of a great tenderness for her, an infinite need of her, a sharp pang of remorse that he should have been disloyal to her for an instant, a strong throbbing in his temples, a wondrous tremor through all his senses. Yet, even while this vision was still haunting his sight, the voice of the rabbi began to ring hideously in his ears, repeating the anathema that his own ancestor had written; and all the Jew in him shuddered at the sound.

He covered his head and prayed.

He remained in prayer until the dawn had begun to whiten the walls of his room.

Then he sat down at his window, and watched the red and gold burn in the eastern sky, and wondered at the strange calm that had come to him. His prayer had been answered, he believed. He had prayed that his heart might be purged of the unholy love that had stolen into it. Now he could think of Christine with complete indifference. Not a trace was left of the agitation which that thought had aroused in him a little while ago.

“The Lord has heard my prayer. I am not in love with her any more,” he said.

He went through the rest of that week in the same indifferent condition—ate, drank, slept, painted, chatted with his uncle, kept the Sabbath, precisely as though Christine Redwood had never crossed the horizon of his world.

“I am not in love with her,” he assured himself. “She is a pretty and pleasant girl; but I am not in love with her, and never shall be.”

The Jew had got the better of the man.

VII.

WHEN Elias woke up Sunday morning, he saw that it was snowing. He lay abed for a while, with eyes turned upon his window-pane, and watched the snow-flakes float lightly and silently earthward through the still air. The street below was noisy with the sound of shovels scraping the pavement. The daylight had caught a deathlike pallor from the whiteness round about. Elias wondered whether he would be expected in Sixty-third Street, despite the storm. He got up and dressed, all the while balancing this question in his mind. But presently the weather itself decided for him. The storm ceased. The snow fell no more. The sun came out.

He went up-town, entered Redwood's parlor, and sat down facing the folding-doors that led into the back room.

He was not in love with her. She was a pretty and pleasant girl, and all that; but he was not in love with her, and never would be. This is what he had repeated to himself again and again during the past few days. So be it. But then why—when all at once she appeared in the opening of the folding-doors, and advanced toward him, proffering her hand, and wishing him good-morning—why did his heart stop beating? Why did his breath become labored and tremulous? Why did his lips quiver, his cheeks burn? Why should the sight of her have had this effect upon a man who did not love her, who was not even on the point of loving her? And then, when he took the proffered hand in his, and gazed down at her face, and breathed the air that her presence sweetened, why was his breast suddenly pierced by a strange emotion, half a pain, half an ecstatic pleasure, and why did he have to exert his utmost self-control, to keep from catching her in his arms, and kissing her? What is the psychology of these phenomena, if he did not love her? She wore the same blue gown that she had worn at all their sittings; but it seemed to him that her face was paler, and that her eyes were larger and darker, than their wont.

She bade him good-morning and withdrew her hand, and remained standing before him; and he remained standing before her, vainly striving to think of something appropriate to say. But—such perturbation did her mere nearness cause him—his senses were dispersed, his tongue was tied. At last, however, he contrived to articulate five words. The sentiment was neither very novel nor very witty; but it was at least creditable, and, let us trust, sincere.

“I hope you are well?”

“No,” she answered, “I don't feel very well.”

“Indeed? I—I hope it is nothing serious.”

“Oh, no; only a headache. And I feel lazy and chilly. I'm afraid I have caught a cold.”

“Then I shan't think of letting you sit for me this morning. We'll wait about our next sitting till you are better.”

“It's too bad to delay you so.”

“No, no, not at all. It won't make the slightest difference. And now, I know you ought to go and lie down. So I'll take myself off. Good-by.”

The last words were forced out with a manifest effort; and the speaker made no visible move to accompany them by the act.

“Oh, must you go?” she asked; and Elias thought her voice fell.

“Why,” he confessed, “I should like nothing better than to stay; only, I was afraid I might be in the way.”

“Oh, what an idea! Won't you come into the back room? It's warmer and cozier there.”

In the back room a bright fire crackled in the grate. Old Redwood sat before it, feet on fender, reading his newspaper. He greeted Elias, without rising; “Oh, it's you, is it, Mr. Bacharach? Glad to see you,” and went on reading.

Christine sank into a deep easy-chair at her father's left. Elias seated himself next to her. He did not speak. He had no desire to speak. He would gladly have sat there all day in silence, simply enjoying the sight of her, and his sense of closeness to her.

She said, “It is a pity to have brought you clear up here for nothing, Mr. Bacharach. It makes me feel guilty to think of the time you are losing.”

“My time,” he protested, “is not of such great value; and there's no place where I could spend it so pleasantly.”

“I should have written you a note,” she added, “telling you not to come; but I had no idea I was going to feel out-of-sorts. I felt as well as usual last night.”

“I'm very glad you didn't write the note,” he said, with haste and emphasis.

“Any way,” she reflected, “you couldn't have received it, could you? To-day being Sunday, it wouldn't have been delivered till to-morrow.”

He made no answer. At that moment he was gazing at a tiny white hand that rested on the arm of her chair, gazing hungrily at it, and thinking how he would like for a single second to touch it, to stroke it, to press it to his lips. The hand must have felt the influence of his gaze, for it began to move about in a restless, uneasy manner, and ended by hiding itself among the folds of her garment in her lap. Elias sighed, as it disappeared; and then, with no obvious relevancy, remarked, “This is the first snow of the year.”

“Yes,” she assented; “and now Christmas will be here pretty soon, and then my birthday. Do you know, Mr. Bacharach, it's very unfortunate to have your birthday come right after Christmas? Because, of course, you can't expect to get presents so soon again. I want my father to change my birthday to July—make believe I was born on the third of July, instead of the third of January. That would have a double advantage. It would make me six months younger.”

“But if I should do that,” argued the old man, “I should have to apply to the legislature to have your name changed, too. We named you Christine, on account of your being born so near Christmas. If we shift your birthday over to July, we'll have to call ye Julia.”

“Oh, then I'd rather have you leave things as they are. I should hate to be called Julia. Do you like Julia, Mr. Bacharach?”

“Not nearly so well as Christine.”—It was delightful—so intimate, so confidential—thus to be allowed to speak her name in her presence.—“Christine,” lingering upon the word, “Christine is the prettiest name I know.”

“Your name,”—shyly—“your name is Elias, isn't it?” she asked.

“Yes, Elias. There have never been any names but three among the men of my family—Ephraim, Abraham, and Elias. My father's name was Abraham, his father's Elias, and so on back. The younger son, when there has been one, has always been called Ephraim. Old-fashioned, Bible names, you see.”

“I had a second-cousin named Ephraim,” old Redwood volunteered.

Christine said, “I'm glad they didn't name you Ephraim or Abraham. But I like Elias.”

“Do you, indeed? Most people find it exceedingly ugly. When I was a boy, it used to make me quite unhappy. My playmates used to tease me about it.”

“How heartless of them! And how stupid! For it isn't a bit ugly. It's strong. It has so much character, so much individuality—Elias.”

If it had been agreeable to be allowed to pronounce her name, it was trebly agreeable to hear her pronounce and applaud his own. Indeed, the quality of the name hereby underwent a considerable transformation, and acquired a euphony to his ears that it had never possessed before.

“Speaking of names,” continued Christine, “do you remember those names that Rossetti mentions in 'The Blessed Damozel,' and calls sweet symphonies?”

“I think Rosalys was one, and Gertrude another, weren't they? There were five altogether.”

“Magdalen was a third. But the book is right there on the table. Let's look and see.”

Elias got the book, sought the place, and read aloud:

“'—Whose names

Are five sweet symphonies,

Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,

Margaret and Rosalys.'”

Christine said, “I wonder, Mr. Bacharach, whether you will do me a kindness?”

“You need not wonder. Of course I will, and gladly. What is it?”

“Read the whole poem aloud to me.”

Elias read it to her. He read it with a good deal of fervor. To be permitted to read aloud to her a poem fraught with intense passion like “The Blessed Damozel,” was the next best thing to being permitted to talk to her of his own love. And all the while, as he was reading, he was conscious of a dainty, subtle fragrance being wafted toward him from where his auditor was seated, and penetrating to his heart, and making it thrill. And whenever he lifted his eyes from off the page, they encountered hers, in the depths of which he could see burning a pale, strange fire; and again his heart vibrated with a keen, exquisite thrill.

When he had done, she exclaimed, softly but earnestly, “Oh, how beautifully you read it! You made me thrill so here,” placing her hand upon her breast.

At that he experienced the keenest and the most exquisite thrill of all.

Pretty soon. “Tell me,” she went on, “which one of Rossetti's poems do you like best of all?”

“Oh!” said he, “I should have hard work to choose. Yet, perhaps, I like 'The Bride's Prelude' as well as any. But which do you?”

“You'll laugh, if I tell you.”

“Oh, no, I sha'n't. Tell me, please.”

“Well, the one that somehow moves me most deeply—it is one that I have scarcely ever heard praised or quoted—may be you haven't even read it. It's a little mite of a lyric—this.”

She took the book, and quietly, slowly, intently, musically, read aloud the song, “Even So.”

“Those last lines,” she added, “sound like the wail of a soul—they are so hopeless, so passionate, so despairing. They suggest so much more than they say—such a deep, dumb grief. Sometimes they haunt my mind for hours and hours together, and give me such a strange heartache. What could it have been, the thing that separated them? I suppose he must have done something base—something that killed her love, so that he lost her forever. Yet I can't understand why it should be so absolutely hopeless. If they really were all alone together, as he says, and she saw how dreadfully he had suffered, I don't understand how she could help forgiving him and loving him again. Do you?”

And she repeated the verse:

“Could we be so now?—

Not if all beneath heaven's pall

Lay dead but I and thou,

Could we be so now!”

She repeated the verse, and at the end she drew a long, tremulous breath. If she had noticed Elias Bacharach's physiognomy, while she was speaking, she could not have failed to guess his secret. Pale cheeks, parted lips, and eyes riveted upon her face, told the whole story more eloquently than his tongue could have done. But her attention was all for Rossetti's poetry.

“Well,” exclaimed old Redwood, “that may be very fine sentiment. I'm not denying it is. But the grammar is what stumps me. When 'but' is used as a preposition, in the sense of 'except,' it governs the accusative case. At least, that's how I was taught at school. The line ought to read: 'Lay dead but me and thee,' or 'me and you.' Ain't that so, Mr. Bacharach?”

“Well, I suppose it's poet's license,” said Elias.

Folding his newspaper, and getting upon his feet, the old man continued, “Well, I guess I may as well go out and get shaved, Chris. I'll leave you in the charge of Mr. Bacharach. Take care of her, Mr. B.” And he went away.

Elias was alone with her.

She sat far back in her chair, looking through half-closed lids into the fire. He sat forward, upon the ultimate edge of his chair, and looked at her. His breath was coming hard and fierce. The blood was bounding in his veins.

For a while neither of them spoke.

By and by Elias broke the silence.

“Miss—— Miss Redwood,” he began; then stopped.

“Yes?” she queried.

He began again, “Miss Redwood—” Again he stopped. His throat felt compressed, his mouth hot and parched. He knew perfectly well what he wanted to say; but his heart trembled so, he could not say it.

She, puzzled no doubt by these successive repetitions of her name, lifted her eyes inquiringly to his.

For an instant their eyes staid together.

That was a memorable instant for Elias Bach-arach. A great wave of emotion took away his breath, made his body quiver, his head swim, as if with vertigo. He tried to speak. His tongue lay paralyzed in his mouth.

Suddenly she looked down; and a scarlet blush suffused her throat and cheeks.

He leapt forward, fell upon his knees before her, caught her hand, and whispered—a tense, eager whisper, that clove the air like a flame—“Christine—my darling!”

She drew her hand away. She trembled from head to foot.

“Don't be afraid, my darling. Don't tremble,” he whispered.

But she did not cease to tremble. She neither raised her eyes, nor spoke. Her blush had died away, leaving her face very pale. Even her lips had lost their color.

“Christine,” he whispered, “I could not help it. I love you. I could not keep it secret, Christine.”

Shrinking from him, deeper into her chair, “Don't—please don't,” she pleaded, in a weak, frightened voice.

Still in a whisper: “I could not help it. I—I had to tell you. Oh, why do you shrink away from me, like that, and tremble? Is my love hateful to you?”

“Oh, no, no, not that,” impulsively; but then she blushed again, as if ashamed.

“Oh, my God! God bless you!” he cried, with a great sigh of relief. “I was afraid it might be.”

He leaned toward her, breathing swiftly; and his eyes consumed her face. By and by, very gently, he spoke her name, “Christine!”

Her lips parted—“Yes?”

“Christine—I love you—with all my heart and soul.”

No response.

“Christine—do you believe me?”

A long breath; then a scarce audible “Yes.”

“Do you think,”—he paused to gain courage. “Do you think it will ever be possible for you to care for me?”

No answer.

“Christine—won't you answer me?”

She raised her eyes; and for an infinitesimal fraction of a second they rested upon his. But then they hastened to seek refuge behind dropped lids, as if afraid of what they had seen and of what they had revealed. Again her cheeks blushed scarlet.

Elias started. Suddenly, he threw his arms around her, and drew her to him hard and close. Her face lay against his shoulder. There was no sound in the room, save the sound of their breathing. At last she broke away.

“Christine—do you think—perhaps—you do—care for me—a little?”

“I don't know,” in a timid whisper.

“Not—not the least bit in the world?”

“I d-don't know,” in a smaller and more timid whisper still. “I—I never thought of it till—till you spoke.”

“Oh, but now that I have spoken—now that you have thought of it—say—say that you don't hate me.”

“Oh, no; I don't hate you at all.”

He took her hand and kissed it. It was burning hot. She drew it gently away.

“Don't—please,” she said, very low.

Again no sound.

Again at length, “Christine!”

“Yes?”

“Do you mind my calling you by your first name—Christine?”

“No—not if you like to.”

“Do you think—you—could ever call me—by mine?”

“I don't know.”

“Won't you try? It—it would make me very happy.”

“El-El-ias—” so softly that it sounded more like a little sigh than like a word.

“Oh! You make me so happy! But do you want to make me happier still?”

“What shall I do?”

“Tell me you are not sorry I love you.”

“Oh, no; I am not sorry.”

“Tell me—tell me that you are glad.”

“Yes—I—I think—I am—glad.”

“Oh, my love! Can't you say just one thing more? You know what. Please.”

She breathed quickly. “Perhaps,” she whispered.

Again Elias threw his arms around her, and drew her close to him. This time she offered no resistance. Their eyes met. So did their lips.

“Oh, how hard your heart is beating!” she murmured softly.

Presently they heard a footstep in the hall.

“It is my father,” she said, moving away.

“Shall we tell him?” Elias asked.

“No, not yet. I will tell him after you have gone.”

The old man entered, clean-shaven, and redolent of the barber's balmy touch. It was edifying, the matter-of-fact, unsentimental manner in which these young hypocrites thereupon began to talk and act. Yes, it was strange, how rapidly the snow had melted; and it did look as though they might have a green Christmas after all; and they neither of them believed in that lugubrious old proverb about a fat church-yard, any how; and, of course, Mr. Bacharach would stay to dinner, wouldn't he? and, well, he would like to, very much indeed, but he didn't want to wear out his welcome; and, oh, there wasn't the slightest danger of his doing that, was there, father? etc., etc. But whenever the old gentleman's back was turned, they stole an eloquent glance at each other; and now and then Elias found an opportunity slyly to snatch and press her hand.

When he left, Christine went with him to the door. Never before had the simple process of leave-taking required such a length of time.

He wandered about the street for a long while, ere he went home. There, he mounted to his studio, and, as usual, sat down at the window. Could it be the same studio that he had worked in, the other day? Could he be the same man? He was as nearly delirious as a person in sound health can be, without going sheer out of his senses. His brain whirled round and round. It was impossible for him to carry on a consecutive or coherent process of thought. Dazzling glimpses of the happiness that the future held in store for him, alternated with exquisite throes of joy, as he recalled what had happened that very day. His heart kept thrilling, and swinging from hot to cold, like a thing bewitched. A sweet smell clung to the palm of his hand, at the spot where hers had lain.

In bed he tossed about all night, murmuring Christine's name, and remembering the way she had looked, and the words that she had spoken, and the kiss that she had given him, and all the rest. At last, without apparent why or wherefore, there began to haunt his mind that verse of Rossetti's poetry, which, she said, had haunted hers. He could not silence it. It repeated itself in a hundred keys. Toward dawn he fell into a restless sleep, to the rhythm of it:

“Could we be so now?—

Not if all beneath heaven's pall

Lay dead but I and thou,

Could we be so now!”

But waking up, late next forenoon, he came to his senses—realized what he had done, and reflected upon it. He hardly dared to credit his memory. He hardly dared to believe that what he remembered was the very truth, and not an hallucination born of his desire. And yet—No; dreams were not made of such circumstantial stuff.

“I love her, I love her,” he cried exultantly. “And she loves me!”

What had become of his Judaism? his race-pride? his superstition? Love, apparently, had swept them clean away. Not a vestige of them remained. At a touch, it seemed, love had converted Elias Bacharach from the most reactionary sort of orthodoxy, to a rationalism, the bare contemplation of which, a few days ago, would have appalled him.

“Surely,” he argued, “the Law of God as the hands of men have written it in books, is not to be weighed against the Law of God as the hand of Nature has written it in my own heart.”

He could not realize that he had ever thought otherwise. He could not realize that he had ever shrunk in terror from the idea of marrying Christine Redwood. He could not realize that he had ever professed a creed by which such a marriage would have been accounted sin. When he recollected how, less than a week ago, that same creed had kept him awake, praying, all night long—when he recollected how, for six days, he had told himself that he did not love her, and never would—he was nonplused; he could not admit it; it was like the recollection of a bad, fantastic dream.

The man had got the better of the Jew.

VIII.

THE man had got the better of the Jew; and the man retained the upper hand. There came no reaction. Elias Bacharach's Judaism—or so much of it, at least, as bore upon the question of matrimony—had apparently suffered sudden and total annihilation. Under the light of love, it had apparently behaved as those hackneyed images in the Etruscan tombs behaved under the light of the sun—collapsed into nothingness. Looking backward, and repeating to himself the views upon intermarriage, which, the rabbi said, there had never been a Bacharach to doubt, he was amazed at their glaring unreasonableness, at their enormity even, and could only ask incredulously, “Is it possible that I ever believed that rubbish?” The philosophy of the matter was extremely simple. Elias had never bestowed upon the rabbi's religious teachings any skeptical consideration. He had accepted them as facts stated upon authority—had taken the rabbi's word for them, just as he had taken the rabbi's word for the boundaries of the State of Nebraska, and for the date of the Battle of Bunker Hill. But, now, when, for the first time, circumstances had led him to bring to bear upon them a little analysis and common-sense, to exercise a little his right and his power of private judgment, now their absurdity had become startlingly conspicuous. Then, of course, his wish fostered his thought. Every spontaneous impulse of his nature aided and abetted his intelligence in its iconoclasm. He wanted—he wanted—to marry Christine Redwood; and a theology which taught that, merely because the accident of birth had made of him a Jew, and of her a Christian, such marriage would be sinful, thereby proved itself to be the offspring of prejudice and superstition.

Christine had said that she would tell her father; but on second thoughts she found that she lacked the proper courage; and so Elias, not without some trepidation, had to take the mission upon himself. The old man, at the outset, professed no end of astonishment, and considerable indignation. “So!” he cried. “I engage you to paint my daughter's portrait, and you spend the time making love to her! A pretty kettle of fish, as I'm alive!” But by degrees his amiability was restored; and finally he remarked, “Well, Mr. Bacharach, though you are a Hebrew, you're white; and any how, religion don't worry us much in this household, and never did. I'm a Universalist, myself; and Chris—well, I guess no one knows what she is. One thing's certain—she might have gone further, and fared worse; she might, for a fact. You're a perfect gentleman; and you can't help it, if you were born a Jew. You don't look like one, and you don't act like one. Of course, there's your name—Bacharach—a regular jaw-breaker; but I shan't stick on a name. It ain't I that's got to bear it; and so long as Chris is satisfied, it ain't for me to grumble. I guess she'll smell about as sweet under it, as she does under her present one. You see, I agree with the Great Bard. Any how, if she's made up her mind to have ye, I suppose I'll be obliged to say yes, sooner or later; and it'll save time and trouble for me to say it sooner.” So it was arranged that they should be married early in the spring, that they should spend the summer traveling in Europe, and that in the autumn they should return to New York, and domicile themselves under Redwood's roof.

“The man who marries my daughter,” stipulated the old gentleman, with a grim smile, “has got to marry me. I ain't pretty, but I'm solid; and I'm not going to be separated from her in my old age. He's got to fetch his traps, and live in this house, besides, because I'm used to it, and I don't mean to quit it till I'm carried out horizontally. It's big enough, and to spare, the Lord knows. Come and look it over.”

Elias followed the old man from cellar to garret. On the third floor his conductor threw open a door, and announced. “This is her room.” Elias's memory of the few brief seconds that he had been permitted to pass upon Christine's threshold, looking into her room, breathing the sweet air of it, and noting its hundred pretty little girlish fixings—inanimate companions of her most intimate life—thrilled in his heart many a time afterward. Was it not for him, her lover, like a glimpse into the Holy of Holies?

They were to be married in the spring. Now it was December. Meanwhile they had nothing to do but to make the most of the present. They saw each other nearly every day; and those days on which something prevented them from seeing each other, were very long and very dark days to Elias Bacharach. How did they amuse themselves? Innocently enough, and with no sort of difficulty. If an exhaustive account of their doings were reduced to writing, it would seem very trivial and very monotonous; but to them, basking in the light of new-born love, the trivial and the monotonous did not exist. High and low, far and wide, the world had been invested with the splendor, the mystery, and the majesty of the golden age. Yes, indeed: the period, long or short, during which first love holds sway over our hearts, tyrant though the ruler be, is notoriously our golden age, never to come but once. In this respect history does not repeat itself. Elias felt that each of his five senses had been sharpened, and that, moreover, he had acquired a sixth sense, a super-sense. The homeliest things, the most familiar sights, the commonest occurrences, took on a beauty, a significance, a suggestiveness, undreamed of until now. They aroused thoughts in his brain, emotions in his breast. He had used to regard New York as a somewhat sordid and unpicturesque metropolis: now he held it to be the most romantic city of the earth. Did she not dwell within its walls? Certainly, in former years, the Eighth Avenue horse-railway, with its dingy cars and shabby passengers, had had no special fascination for him; but now the bare mention of its name would rouse a sentimental tenderness in his bosom. Was not that the line by which he traveled when he went to see her? Everywhere he became aware of new aspects and new influences, to which heretofore his consciousness had been hermetically sealed. In a letter written by him to Christine at about this time—for, despite the frequency of their meetings, they found it necessary to keep the post-office busied on their behalf—Elias indulges in the following rhapsody:

“I have waked up from a long sleep, a period of torpor, diversified by vague dreams, into fresh, keen, sensitive life. I have begun to love; and until one begins to love, one is only half born. Until one loves, half the faculties, half the activities, which one possesses, lie in a dormant state, are merely potential, latent. For love—is it not the very soul and life of life itself? I know a poem which says: 'Through love to light! Oh, wonderful the way, that leads from darkness to the perfect day!' That expresses exactly what I mean. The life I lived before I knew you, and began to love you, compared to the life I live now, as the dusk of early morning compares to the brilliant day that comes with the rising of the sun. Where there was chill, now there is warmth. Where there was silence, now there is music. Where there was gloom, now there is glory.

“Things that were before invisible or insignificant, now force themselves upon my attention, and have a meaning and a solemnity. It is as though you had touched me with a vivifying wand—as though you had given me to drink of the elixir of life. Well, you have given me to drink of the elixir of love; and that is even more potent and marvelous in its effects. These are not mere phrases, Christine, dashed off in enthusiasm, without being weighed. They are an imperfect expression of very real and practical facts. See the direct and manifest influence that my love of you has exercised upon my work, my art. I used to tell myself, with a good deal of complacency, that the artist was a sort of priest; that he ought to be a celibate, that he ought to consecrate the whole of himself to his art, that the muse should be his wife, that no mortal woman should divide his homage with her. I had one formula that pleased me especially. I said,4 The muse is a jealous mistress. She will brook no rivalry. To win her favor, one must renounce the world, and devote himself exclusively to her service.' And I used to fancy that I really believed this high-flown nonsense. But what sophism! What cant! What puerile pinning of my faith to a hollow set of words? For the very first requirement to successful accomplishment in art—what is it? Isn't there a spiritual equipment as much needed by the artist, as indispensable to his productiveness, as his material equipment of palette, paint-tubes, and brushes? Why, the very sinequa-non is this; that he shall live. I mean, that he shall be intensely human; that he shall think clearly, feel deeply, and see truly—see the truth, the whole truth, and the very heart of the truth. Until one has lived in this sense, one's art will never be real art. It will only be a nicer, a more complex, species of mechanics. It will be the body of art, without the spirit of it. Well, did I live, did I think, feel, see, before I knew you, and loved you? A little, perhaps; vaguely, incompletely; by fits and starts; as in a glass, darkly. But now? Oh, it is as though you had given me a soul! You have quickened the dormant soul that was in me, given it eyes, ears, perceptions, sympathies. At last I am alive, tingling and throbbing to my finger tips with life, with warm, buoyant, intense, eager life. My existence now is a constant exaltation, a constant inspiration. Whatever my eye looks upon, whatever my ear hears, whatever my fingers touch, means something, says something to me, and wakes a response in my own heart. I think, feel, see, and consequently paint, with a zest, an impetus, a power, and yet a serenity, a repose, of which I never even had a conception in the old days, Christine! Oh, my love! '...When I look at you, Christine, and realize that you are my betrothed—that you love me, and that you have promised to be my wife; and when I take your little hand in mine, and stroke it, and feel its wondrous warmth and softness, and bring it to my lips, and breathe that most delicate fragrance which ever clings to it; and when I gaze into the luminous depths of your eyes, and behold your spirit burning far, far down in them: oh! my blood seems to catch fire; each breath is like a draught of some magic, intoxicating vapor; I come near to fainting, for the great joy that fills my heart—fills it, and thrills it. I dare say all men who love, and are loved in return, are happy. But none can be so supremely happy as I am, so miraculously happy; because no one else loves you, and is loved by you. And other women are no more like you than—than dust is like fire, than glass is like diamond, than water is like wine. You mustn't laugh at me for saying this. It is really, honestly true. They resemble you in outward form, of course; they, too, have hands and feet, shaped more or less upon the same pattern that yours are shaped upon. But you—you have something—something which I can not name or describe—something subtle, impalpable, and yet unmistakable—something supersensual, celestial—which makes you as different from them as—it is a grotesque comparison, but it will show you what I mean—as a magnet is different from common iron. It is a difference of quality, which I can not find any words exactly to define. I suppose really that it is simply your soul—that you have a purer, finer soul than other women. Whatever it is, I recognized it, and felt it, with a thick thrill, as one feels an electric spark, the first time I ever saw you—reflected in that old, time-stained looking-glass, between the windows in your father's shop. I recognize and feel it perpetually, everywhere I go. All the other women that I see have about them a touch of the earth, from which you are free; and they lack that touch of heaven, which you have....

“Why, from among the millions of men upon this planet, why should I have been the one chosen to enjoy this unique rapture? What have I done to deserve that the single peerless and perfect lady should be mine? It is incomprehensible. In a world built up of marvels, it is the prime, the crowning, the over-topping marvel. It would be incredible, were it not indubitably true. But sometimes, true though I know it to be, I become so acutely conscious of the wonder and incomprehensibility of it, that I doubt it in spite of myself. Then I think: may be, after all, it is a dream. At such moments, I hasten to see you, to verify it. I can not reach you quickly enough. At what a snail's pace the horse-car drags along! How endless are the intervals when it stops, to take in or to let off a passenger! I count the seconds, I count the inches. All the while, my soul is trembling within me; nor does it cease to tremble, till I have crossed your threshold, and beheld you with my eyes, and touched you with my hands, and thus, so far as seeing and feeling are believing, convinced myself that you really exist, and that my great happiness is not a phantasm—unless indeed, my whole life is one long phantasm, one continuous dream, which sometimes I think may be the explanation of it. This great, vast happiness! It would be ungrateful and irreverent to suppose that it has fallen to my lot by mere chance or accident; and yet I can not understand why God should have so favored me above all other living men; why He should have selected me to receive the greatest blessing that He had to bestow—your love, my queen!”

And in a letter written by her to him, she says: “What if we had never known each other? That would have been very possible, wouldn't it? The world is so large, and there are so many, many people, and the likelihood of any two happening to come together is so very slight, it would have been quite possible for us to have gone through life, and died, without ever having known each other. Think of the many years that we did dwell right here in the same city, without ever even knowing of each other's existence! And yet often, perhaps, in the course of those years, we came very near together. Who can tell but that we may have sat together in the same concert-hall, listening to the same music? We may have passed each other in the street a great many times. We may even have ridden in the same horse-car together, and not have noticed each other. Isn't it strange? But think, if I had not happened to go to my father's shop that afternoon! Or, if you had not happened to go there, too, at just the same time! Why, then we might never have known each other at all! It takes my breath away, to think of it; doesn't it yours? How strange and empty and incomplete our lives would have been? We should have gone through life, without ever really knowing what life meant—without ever realizing the greatness and the richness and the wonder of it. I should never have known what it was to love—for I never could have loved any one but you. Oh, how lonesome I should have been! But you—do you think you might have loved somebody else, and married her? There are so many women; but there is only one you.—— Oh, if I could only feel sure that you would always, always love me, and never get over loving me! Whenever you are away from me, I can't help being afraid that you do not love me any more. I long so impatiently to have you come back and tell me that you do. If you ever really should get over loving me—oh, I—I would rather have you kill me right away.”

Thus these young persons pursued their billing and cooing. Thus they played their parts in the oldest of old plays, never for an instant suspecting that the same songs had been sung, the same lines declaimed, the same little scenes enacted, the whole worn threadbare, by myriads of similar personages, ever since the world began; and scarcely giving a thought, either, to the time when, by and by, the curtain would be rung down, and the theater emptied, and the foot-lights put out. So shortsighted, so self-absorbed, is love. The two letters from which I have just quoted, lie before me now. It is not such a great while since they were written—not such a great while since the paper grew hot tinder the writer's hand, and fluttered as the reader's breath fell upon it. But the paper is quite cold now; and already the ink has begun to fade. Yet, to Christine's pages there still clings, singularly enough, the ghost of a faint, sweet smell.

Numberless were the delightful hours that Elias spent painting at her portrait; and long before the spring came he had it finished. Of course, he was not satisfied with it. Of course, he found it tame and poor when compared to the original. But what true artist ever is satisfied with his own handiwork? What true lover but always will find tame and poor a portrait of his mistress? He made, besides, a great many pencil and water-color drawings of her. He never tired of striving to transfix something of her exquisite beauty upon the pages of his sketch-book. The effort was always a pleasure. The result was always a disappointment. He did not, however, by any means, confine these experiments to his sketch-book. All the blank paper that passed his way, ran an imminent risk of being seized upon, and made to bear an attempt at her likeness. I have on my desk that volume of Rossetti's poems, from which, on a memorable Sunday morning, Elias read aloud “The Blessed Damozel.” Scattered over the fly-leaves and the margins of the pages, I have counted no fewer than sixty-nine pencil studies of Christine's face, in various stages of completion. Beneath one of these is written in Elias's hand, “Oh, what a wonder of a woman!” and immediately following, in Christine's, “Oh, what a goose!”

Often, if the sun shone, they would take long walks in Central Park; and Christine kept her promise to show him some of those nooks and corners which she had preempted, and which nobody else knew the existence of. One of these speedily became a favorite resort of theirs. It was a high rock, the top of which was carpeted with many generations of pine needles, and screened from the vulgar gaze by a girdle of pine trees. Here, when the weather was warm enough, they would stop to rest for a little after their jaunts; and here, though he never suspected it, the final chapter of Elias Bacharach's story was destined to be acted out. The pine trees are still standing and flourishing: but they are inscrutable, and bear no record, breathe no hint, of the tender passages between these lovers, at which they were wont to assist.

Often, in the midst of his work in his studio, Elias would be seized by a sudden and uncontrollable desire to pay his sweetheart a visit; and would fling aside his brushes, discharge his model, hurry up-town, and ring her door-bell. Of course, unapprised of his coming, she would not always be at home; but if the maid could inform him whither she had gone, he would be sure to follow; and on more than one occasion he caught a fine cold, standing in the wind-swept-street, watching the door of the house where he knew that she was calling, and waiting to join her at her exit.

Christmas came, and New Year's Day, and her birthday, and his. They celebrated all of these festivals in company. For New Year's Eve, one of Christine's Normal College classmates had invited her to a party. Elias naturally was her cavalier. He suffered torments indescribable, as she whirled through the waltz on the arm of another man—he could not dance, himself; had never learned how, poor fellow—but when, from the corner in which he was sulking alone, he saw that the heel of her slipper had broken off, and that her partner was holding that heel in his hand, and inspecting it with curious eyes, he could no longer contain himself. Another man to profane with his touch the heel of Christine's slipper! He advanced upon the couple, scowling savagely; and addressing the young man: “Give me that,” he commanded gruffly. He got hold of it, and stuck it into his pocket. Christine shot dagger-glances at him. On their way home, in the carriage, she scolded him roundly for his jealousy and his bad manners; but before they separated, she had forgiven him; and the padded carriage walls had witnessed a very pretty reconciliation. That night he sat up till daybreak, writing her a letter, very penitent, very affectionate, very voluminous. “That we should have begun the New Year with a quarrel!” was its remorseful burden. At eight o'clock he dispatched it by a messenger. Yet he knew that at ten o'clock that very forenoon she would be ready to receive him in proper person. But ten o'clock!

Two mortal hours! It seemed years and years away.

Time moved steadily forward. The winter passed. March came, an exceptionally mild, sunshiny March, much of which was spent among the pine trees in the park; then April. Their wedding-day was definitely fixed for the second of May. On the third, they were to set sail by the French steamship for Havre. Their tickets were bought, their plans were all made. The services of the clergyman who was to tie the knot, had been secured. And yet, in all these months, not a whisper of his engagement had Elias breathed to his uncle, the Rabbi Felix. From day to day, from week to week, he had put off the inevitable moment. He knew that nothing which the rabbi could say or do, would have the slightest effect upon him, so far as shaking his resolution was concerned; but he supposed that there would be a scene, and a very stormy and disagreeable one, and he dreaded it; and so he had procrastinated—or, as he phrased it, had waited for a favorable opportunity. He had gone on living in the same house, eating at the same board, with this old man, his uncle; chatting with him, even, as a precaution against possible suspicions, saying his prayers and reading his Bible with him, and all the while keeping the one dominant fact of his life shut close in from sight. Sometimes the secret weighed very heavily upon his mind, pressed hard for utterance, got even so far as the tip of his tongue. But then, asking himself, “What good—what but bad—could come of my telling him?” he would decide to wait for yet another while. Perhaps the rabbi, on his side, had noticed that Elias was absent from home a good deal; but, considering his youth, and that his home was such a dull, unattractive place, what wonder? What else could be expected? I must not forget to state that some rumors to the effect that Elias Bach-arach intended to get married, were circulating in the Jewish world—which is, of all worlds, the one most prone to gossip—but these failed to specify the lady's name, and took for granted that she was a Jewess; and the rabbi was far too much of a recluse to be reached by them, any how.

With the Redwoods Elias had been perfectly frank. He had said to the old man: “I suppose you will think that the only relative I have in this quarter of the world—my uncle, Dr. Gedaza—ought to call upon you; and I suppose you'll think it very singular if he doesn't. But I had better tell you candidly that he will strongly disapprove of my marriage, simply and solely on the ridiculous ground that Christine happens not to have been born a Jewess. I hope you won't let this have the slightest influence whatever upon you; because I'm a man, of full age and sound mind, master of my own purse and person, and he's only my uncle; and, with all due respect, I can't see that my marriage is any of his business.” In the end, both Christine and her father had accepted Elias's view of the case.

Time moved steadily forward, and now it was the night of Tuesday, the first of May, and to-morrow Elias's happiness would be sealed and consummated. He and Christine had spent a very ecstatic evening with each other; but, of course, by and by it behooved him to take his leave; and so, toward eleven o'clock, he rose and began the process. About midway in it, however, he broke off and said abruptly: “Oh, by the by, I forgot to tell you something.”

“Ah?” she queried. “What?”

“An idea I had.”

“An idea?”

“Yes; about—about breaking the news to my uncle.”

“News? What news?”

“Why, the news—the news of our marriage.”

“Why!” she exclaimed, with an expression of very serious surprise. “Do you mean to say that—that you haven't done that yet?”

“No; not yet. That's just the point. You see——

“Oh, Elias,” she interrupted, in a tone of emphatic rebuke, “I supposed, of course, you had told him long ago. You ought to have told him. That wasn't right.”

“What difference does it make? I have waited about it, because it would only have raised trouble between him and me, without doing a particle of good to either. There's no end to the bother and complications it would have caused. He lives in my house, you know; and if we had had a row, he would have felt obliged to clear out, and all that. So I kept my own counsel; and I'm very glad I did. For now my idea is to say nothing to him at all; but after we're safely aboard-ship, and started for the other side, I'll send him a letter by the pilot. That will spare both of us a very painful and unprofitable interview.”

“Oh, but it's not fair, it's not honorable, it's not respectful. He's your uncle—your own mother's brother—and you owe it to him not to do that—not to go and get married without even letting him know. You ought to have told him long ago. It will hurt his feelings awfully, when he finds out how long you have kept it from him—when he finds that you have waited till the very eleventh hour. Now you must tell him right straight away—as soon as you possibly can—to-night, as soon as you reach home. Promise me that you will.”

“But, Christine—”

“No, no, no! Unless you want to make me very unhappy, you'll promise to tell him right away. That letter by the pilot! I don't understand how you could have thought of such a thing! It would be cruel and—and it would be cowardly! There!”

Elias tried to argue the matter. But Christine put her foot down, and vowed, with a look of inflexible determination upon her gentle face, that she would never, never, forgive him, unless he made a clean breast of it to the rabbi that very night.

“But it is late. What if he should have gone to bed?” he suggested feebly.

“Then wake him up.”

Of course, before they parted, he had pledged himself to do exactly as she wished; and she, pacified, went off to bed, whether to sleep or to lie awake, in either case, we may be sure, to dream of the happiness that was ripening for her in the womb of time.

Elias did not enjoy his journey home that night. His frame of mind was by no means such as, on general principles, one would expect of a man in his position—a man who had just said his last farewell to the lady whom he loved, and whom the morrow was to make his bride. His imagination running on ahead of his person, entered the rabbi's study, and rehearsed the scene that would there shortly have to be enacted in very truth. Elias was surprised at the excessive dread he felt. He strove to reason it away, repeating to himself, “He can do nothing, absolutely nothing. He can only talk; and talk doesn't hurt.” But all the same, when he arrived in front of his house, and realized that the long-deferred moment was actually at hand, his heart quaked within him, and a sudden perspiration broke out upon his forehead. However, there was no help for it. He had promised; and he was bound to keep his promise. So, drawing a deep breath, and swallowing his reluctance he opened the rabbi's study door.

IX

HE rabbi sat before his empty fire-place, with slippered feet upon the hearth, reading to himself, in a whisper, from the current number of The Jewish Messenger. He raised his eyes absent-mindedly upon Elias's face, where they rested for an instant, vacant of expression. Then, suddenly, they lighted up, but with a light which was manifestly that of alarm. Throwing aside his newspaper, and half rising from his chair, “What—what is the matter with you?” he cried. “What has happened?”

“Happened? The matter with me?” stammered Elias, halting. “What do you mean?”

“Why, boy, you're as pale as death. You look—you look as though you had seen a ghost.”

Elias forced a laugh, a faint one.

“Nonsense,” he said. “I'm all right. Perhaps it's the shade of your lamp. The light, coming through that green, is enough to make any one look.”

He sat down opposite the rabbi, and struggled hard to appear nonchalant and at his ease, even going to the length of lighting a cigarette. He must have met with some success; for presently the rabbi, who had not ceased to regard him anxiously, observed with an air of relief, “Yes, I guess it was the lamp-shade. Now that you're seated and out of the range of it, you look as usual. But when you first came in, I declare, you gave me quite a turn.” With which he picked up his newspaper, found his place, and resumed his whispered reading.

Thus for a few minutes. Then, tossing his half-consumed cigarette into the grate, “I wanted to have a little talk with you to-night, Uncle Felix, if you don't mind,” Elias said.

“Of course, I don't mind,” the rabbi returned kindly, lowering his paper. “What did you want to say?”

“Something that will surprise you, I suppose. I wanted to tell you that I am thinking of—of getting married.”

“Ah, indeed!” cried the rabbi, his face breaking into a smile. “Thinking of getting married! Well, I'm glad, right glad, to hear it. It's—you're twenty-seven, aren't you?—it's high time.”

“So it is,” Elias assented, conscious of a certain dismal humor in the situation.

There befell a silence, during which the rabbi, still with a smile upon his lips, seemed to be revolving the intelligence in his mind.

Pretty soon, “Yes, I admit, it does surprise me,” he continued, “for, to speak the truth, I had set you down for a pretty confirmed woman-hater. But, as I say, it's high time. Men wait too long nowadays about getting married. In half the weddings that I perform, the bridegrooms are fully thirty-five, and many of them are upwards of forty. Now, in my time, it was different. We used to recognize marriage as a religious obligation—which it is, in fact—and to look askance at a man who was still single at five-and-twenty. I myself was married at twenty-three.”

He paused for a moment, then asked, “Well, have you begun to look around?”

“To look around?” queried Elias, puzzled.

“Exactly—for a young lady,” explained the rabbi.

“Oh! Why, no. I found her without looking around.”

“Found her? You mean, then, that you have actually made a choice?”

“Why, of course. What did you suppose?”

“Oh, I thought may be you were merely considering the subject abstractly—on general principles—and had decided that the time had come. But you say that you have already chosen the lady. Well, I declare, how close-mouthed you have kept!—I suppose now,” he added, “you want me to open negotiations, eh?”

“Negotiations? How do you mean?”

“Why, with her parents, of course. Ask for her hand—declare your sentiments.”

“Oh, no; that isn't necessary.”

“No? How so?”

“Why, I've done all that for myself. I have proposed, and—and been accepted.”

“You have! You don't say so! Oh, you sly, secretive rascal! Well, I congratulate you. You ought to have stuck to the good, old-fashioned custom, and had me make the first advances; but I congratulate you, all the same. What's her name? Who is she? One of our congregation? Tell me all about her.”

The rabbi sat forward in his chair, curiosity incarnate. His pale skin had become slightly flushed. His eyes, beaming over the gold bows of his spectacles, were fixed intently upon his nephew's face.

Elias had not enjoyed this beating about the bush; but he had lacked both the courage and the tact to put an end to it. Now, however, when its end had arrived naturally, in the course of circumstances, he wished that it might have been indefinitely prolonged; so great, so unreasonable, was the dread he felt.

“Her name,” he began—he looked hard at the floor; and his voice was a trifle unsteady—“she's a young American lady; and her name is Redwood—Miss Christine Redwood.”

For an instant the rabbi's appearance did not change. It no doubt needed that instant for his mind to appreciate the purport of what his ears had heard. But all at once, the flush across his forehead first deepened to a vivid crimson, and then faded quite away, leaving the skin waxen white, with the blue veins distended upon it. A dart of light, like an electric spark, shot from his eyes, which then filled with an opaque, smoky darkness. His lips twitched a little; his fingers clenched convulsively. He started backward a few inches into his chair. His attitude was that of a man whose faculties have been scattered and confounded by a sudden, tremendous blow.

But this attitude the rabbi retained for scarcely the time it takes to draw a breath. Almost at once he seemed to recover himself. His fingers relaxed. His face regained its ordinary composure. In a low voice, with not a trace of perturbation, coldly, even indifferently:

“A young American lady? Miss Christine—? Be kind enough to repeat the name,” he said.

Elias, continuing to stare hard at the floor, repeated it: “Redwood—Miss Christine Redwood.”

Then, with bowed head and trembling heart, he waited for the outbreak which, he supposed, of course, would come. He stared at the floor—taking vague note of the patch of carpet at his feet, remarking how threadbare it was worn, how faded its colors were, remarking even how, at a certain point, a bent pin stuck upward from it—stared at the floor, and waited. But the rabbi spoke no word. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked, ticked, ticked; suddenly, from its interior, sounded a quick whir of machinery, and then a single clear stroke of its bell—half-after midnight. Next instant the clock of St. George's church, across the park, responded with a deep, reverberating boom-Elias waited; and still the rabbi did not speak. Such silence was incomprehensible, exasperating, ominous. All the more violent, for this delay, would the storm be, when it broke, Elias thought. He did not dare to look the rabbi squarely in the face, to meet his eye; but he stole a glance, swift enough to escape arrest, and yet deliberate enough to see that the rabbi was still seated, just as before, in his chair; and then he returned to his contemplation of the carpet. Yes, the silence was exasperating, even unbearable. Why did he not say his say, scold, plead, exhort, curse, empty the phials of his wrath, and have done with it? Elias waited till his over-taxed nerves could endure the suspense no longer; when, teeth gritted, tone defiant, “Redwood,” he repeated for a third time. “Don't you hear?”

The rabbi vouchsafed no syllable in reply; but his lips curled in a slight, enigmatic smile.

Again Elias found himself constrained to wait. He waited till the silence had again grown insupportable. At length, springing to his feet, “For God's sake,” he cried, “why—why don't you speak?”

“Speak?” echoed the rabbi, with the same inscrutable smile, and a scarcely perceptible shrug of the shoulders. “What is there to say?”

“Say—say any thing. I don't care what you say,” Elias cried passionately. “Only, this silence—if you want to drive me crazy, keep it up. It makes me feel as if—as if my head would burst open.” He crushed his hands hard against his temples. “Go on. Speak. Curse me. Any thing. Only, don't sit there that way, as though you had been struck dumb.”

“Come, come, Elias! Stop your bellowing. Stop storming about like that. Sit down—there, where you were before. Be quiet. Be rational. Then, if you wish, we can talk.”

Elias dropped into his chair.

“I'm quiet. I'm rational,” he groaned. “Go ahead.”

“Well, really,” the rabbi submitted. “I don't see that there is much to be said.”

“Not much to be said! For heaven's sake! Haven't you heard? Haven't you understood? Haven't I told you that I am going to marry a Christian?”

“There's no need of screaming at me, Elias. Yes. I have understood. When—when was it your intention that this marriage should take place?”

“To-morrow. It takes place to-morrow evening at half past eight o'clock.”

“Indeed? So soon? Why have you waited so long about telling me? Or, having waited so long, why did you tell me at all?”

“I don't know. Many reasons. I thought—”

“Oh, well, it doesn't matter. It makes no difference,” the rabbi interrupted, and again relapsed into silence.

“Well?” ventured Elias, interrogatively.

“Well, what?” returned the rabbi.

“Well, why don't you go on? Finish what you've got to say?”

“I don't know that I have any thing more to say.”

“Any thing more! You haven't said any thing at all, as yet.”

“Well, then, I don't know that I have any thing at all to say.”

“Good God!” Elias broke out furiously. “You—you'll—what is the matter with you, any how? I tell you that I am going to marry a Christian; and you—you sit there—like—like I don't know what—and answer that you have nothing to say about it!”

“Precisely; because, indeed, I have nothing to say about it—except this, that the marriage will never take place. That's all.”

“Never take place! I give it up. What in reason's name do you mean?”

“I mean what I say.”

“That we—she and I—are—are not going to get married, after all?”

“Yes.”

“But haven't I told you that our marriage comes off to-morrow night?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Well, you have told me so; but you are mistaken.”

“Mistaken! I think you must have gone mad.”

“Not in the least. The marriage won't come off to-morrow night, nor any other night.”

“I should like to know what's to prevent it.”

“It will be prevented.”

“I don't just see how.”

“Wait, and you shall see.”

“By whom? By you, for example? If so, by what means?”

“Oh, no; not by me.”

“By whom, then?”

Elias put this question, smiling defiantly.

For a moment there was a deep stillness in the room, broken only by the ticking of the clock. Then the rabbi rose to his feet, advanced close to Elias, and stood facing him. With an expression of immense dignity upon his white, delicately modeled features, quietly, gravely, in a tone of serene conviction: “Elias,” he said, “by the Lord our God, the God of Israel.”

Elias's smile died out. He recoiled with a start into his chair; and for an instant all the blood left his lips. But then, with an attempt at lightness which was somehow very unbecoming, “Oh, so? You mean, I suppose, that the Lord will strike me dead—or afflict me with a paralysis—or something of that kind—yes?”

Quite unscathed by his nephew's irony, slowly, seriously, without raising his voice, “I mean, Elias,” the rabbi pursued, “that you had better beware. You expected me—when, at midnight, you burst in here, pale with guilt, and made the announcement that within twenty-four hours you were going to transgress all the laws of our religion, by marrying a woman who is not of our race or faith—you expected me—didn't you?—to reason with you, to picture to you the awful consequences that must follow upon such a sin, to plead with you in the name of your dead father and mother, to entreat you, to endeavor in every possible way to get you to give up your insane, suicidal idea. You expected me, as you have said, to curse you; or, that failing, to fall upon my knees, and beseech you.—Well, you see—and, to judge from your actions, you see with some surprise, even with some disappointment—that I do none of these things, that I do nothing of the kind. Why? Because, as I have told you, the marriage you speak of will never take place. There is not a single chance of its taking place—not any more chance of its taking place, than there is of the sun's failing to rise to-morrow morning. Neither I, nor any man, need raise a finger, need speak a word. The Lord God of Israel, Elias Bacharach, has His eye upon you. He will prevent this marriage from taking place. And all I say to you is—what I said at the beginning—look out! Beware!”

The rabbi had spoken very earnestly, but very quietly, and without a touch of excitement. Having concluded, he went back to his chair, took off his spectacles, wiped their lenses with his handkerchief, and unconcernedly replaced them upon the bridge of his nose.

Elias had sat still, nervously twitching his foot, and allowing his eyes to roam vacantly about the room. Now, for a moment, he kept his peace. Then, “You don't state the grounds for this singular and no doubt comforting belief, nor do you specify the methods by which the Lord is to accomplish the result. I should like to know, if it is the some to you, just what to expect. Am I, as I suggested, to be incapacitated bodily? By paralysis? By death? Or what?”

“I don't choose to state the grounds of my belief, Elias, nor to specify in any respect, nor, indeed, to discuss the question at all with you—especially when you see fit to adopt that insolent and blasphemous tone of voice. I will simply repeat—what I hope you will reflect upon, and take to heart—that you had best beware. Now I wish to be left alone. I shall see you again in the morning. Good-night.”

Elias rose.

“Well, I'm glad you take the matter so easily, Uncle Felix; and since you practically put me out, good-night.”

X.

AS he had done upon a former and slightly similar occasion, and as he was wont to do whenever his spirits were in any degree perturbed, Elias climbed up-stairs to his studio, and sat down at the window. All day long the sun had shone bright and hot; but ever since dusk the sky had been clouding over; and now, plainly, a thunder-storm was near at hand. The atmosphere was thick, still, tepid. With increasing frequency, shafts of jagged lightning tore their way through the clouds, and were followed by long, sullen, distant rumblings, as of suppressed fury somewhere. Suddenly a breeze sprang up, swelling quickly into a strong wind. The air filled with dust. The branches of the trees, over in the park, groaned aloud; and from here and there came the noise of banging shutters, and of loose things generally being knocked about. The flames in the street-lamps below flared violently. Some of them went out. Big drops of lukewarm water began to fall, splashing audibly where they struck. All at once, a blinding flash, a deafening peal of thunder, from right overhead; and the rain came pouring down in torrents.

Now, of course, Elias Bacharach—he in whose soul the man had long since worsted the Jew, and reason abolished superstition—of course, Elias knew that what his uncle had said about the God of Israel interposing to prevent his marriage, was the sheerest sort of rubbish. That the old gentleman had spoken in good faith—that he really believed in the validity of his own prophecies, and had not uttered them merely with a view to working upon his hearer's imagination, and exciting his fears—Elias could not doubt; for to resort to such strategy was not, he conceived, in the character of the artless and simple-minded rabbi. But that very good faith only proved him to be the victim of a most preposterous delusion. For himself, Elias had no misgivings. As confident as a mortal can be of any future event, in this world of uncertainties, so confident was he that the morrow evening would make of him and Christine man and wife. Of course, there was always the unforeseen to be allowed for; accidents were always possible. But if he had none but supermundane obstacles to dread, then he might regard his marriage as already an accomplished fact. And, notwithstanding, Elias felt very much disturbed—very much annoyed, mystified, and ill-at-ease. All that the rabbi had said was stuff and nonsense, at absolute, obvious variance with science, with simple common sense—fit material for laughter, for a certain contemptuous pity; but, nevertheless, every time that Elias recalled just what the rabbi had said, and the rabbi's manner of saying it, he felt a sharp, inward pang, very like terror; he had to catch a quick, short breath; and he confessed to himself that he would give a good deal to be enabled to get inside the rabbi's consciousness, and learn the grounds on which he based his extraordinary, but apparently secure, conviction, and find out exactly what form of divine interference he anticipated. Despite his clear perception of the rabbi's sophistry, he caught himself furtively querying: “Can there be any thing in it?” Despite his assurance that all would go well, he caught himself furtively wishing that all was well over, and his marriage-certificate signed and sealed. “There is not a single chance of its taking place—not any more chance of its taking place than there is of the sun's failing to rise to-morrow morning.” That phrase stuck like a thorn in his mind, and produced a considerable irritation.

This state of things, besides being intrinsically unpleasant, was offensive to Elias's self-esteem. That he, at his age, in his stage of enlightenment, should be unsettled by the senseless menaces of a superstitious old bigot! Like a child frightened by its nurse's bugaboo. And yet, there it was again, the sharp, internal twinge, so like the sting of terror; and there again he fell to speculating upon what the causes of the old man's singular belief could be.

He sat at his window, peered out into the night, and tried to think of something else. He tried to think of Christine, tried to call up her image, tried to live over again the evening that he had passed with her, tried to picture to himself the happiness that the coming day held in store. No use. “There is no more chance of its taking place, than there is of the sun's failing to rise to-morrow morning.” The rabbi's voice kept ringing in his ears, like a hateful tune that one has heard, and can't get rid of. The painful emotions it awoke, kept rankling in his bosom, and crowded out all the sweeter ones that sought to enter. He could fix his mind permanently upon no subject but the rabbi's irrational predictions. He tried to stir up a little interest in the thunder-storm. There it was, raging furiously just outside his open window; rain dashing earthward like a loosened flood; lightning-flash following lightning-flash, and thunderclap thunder-clap, in rapid, tumultuous, terrifying succession; enough, one would fancy, to arrest and to appall the attention of any conscious being, human or even brute, within the reach of sight or sound; but Elias's attention it held for a moment only. Then his mind sped back to the subject which he was most anxious to avoid. “Not a single chance—not any more chance than there is of the sun's failing to rise!”

The clock of St. George's Church struck two. What was the rabbi doing now? Elias wondered. Had he gone to bed? Or was he, perhaps, still down stairs in his study?—praying, perhaps, that the Lord would in no wise dishonor His servant's pledges. At this notion, Elias involuntarily ground his teeth. “Praying for mischief!” he thought. “And what—what if, after all, there should be some efficacy in that sort of prayer!”—He remembered and rejoiced that he had told the rabbi nothing further about Christine than her name—neither her father's name, nor her place of abode. Otherwise, the rabbi might have deemed it his duty to constitute himself heaven's instrument, and, by intimidating the bride, have caused pain and trouble, if not, temporarily at least, have prevented the wedding from proceeding. In his fanaticism, what might he not be capable of doing?

The rain, beating upon the window-sill, spattered inward, wetting Elias's clothing. When, by and by, he became aware that his coat-sleeve had got soaked through, he left his seat, closed the window, and lighted the gas.

His studio—in anticipation of his coming trip to Europe, and subsequent change of residence—he had pretty well dismantled, having packed away in dark closets and camphor-chests, the most part of such goods and chattels as dust or moth can corrupt. Little, indeed, was left out, save three or four chairs, a life-size lay-figure stripped of its draperies, an easel or two, and a few time-blackened plaster casts fastened to the wall. But over in one corner there was heaped up an assortment of miscellaneous odds and ends, the accumulation of half a dozen years, which, now, as his eye noted it, Elias remembered, he had meant to overhaul, with a view to laying aside whatever he should think worth keeping, and consigning the rest to the rag-and-bottle man. In the hurry and excitement of the past few days, however, he had forgotten all about it.

For a little while Elias stood still, blinking in the new-made gas-light, and gazing rather vacantly at this old lumber-pile. Then, suddenly, a gleam as of inspiration brightening his features, “What time,” he asked himself, “could be better than the present? If I go to bed, I shall only toss about, without sleeping; whereas, if I do this, it will be an improvement upon sitting idle, and brooding, any how.”

With which, straightway, he whipped off his coat, drew up a chair, and, not incurious as to what long-lost objects he might possibly unearth, started upon the forgotten task.

Paint-rags, besmeared with a thousand colors; torn canvases, bearing half-finished, half-begun, or half-obliterated studies; paint-tubes, half-emptied, in which the remaining paint had congealed, or “fatted”; worn-out brushes, broken palettes, shattered maul-sticks, fragments of old casts and ornaments in plaster or terra-cotta; letters without envelopes, envelopes without letters; newspapers, pamphlets, exhibition catalogues, magazines, circulars, tailor's bills, cracked bottles, cigarette-stumps, cast-off gloves, pocket handkerchiefs, cravats; all sheeted over with fine, black dust, and all exhaling a musty, oily odor; these were the elements that predominated, and most of these Elias tossed pell-mell to the middle of the floor, for the maid to carry away in the morning. To divert one's thoughts from some persistent and exasperating topic, it is a commonplace, there is nothing like busying one's fingers; manual exercise being the surest means to the end of mental rest. Pretty soon Elias's late encounter with his uncle had sunken out of mind—only occasionally, for brief intervals, to struggle up, and agitate the surface—and agreeably interested in his present occupation, he was whistling softly to himself, indifferent alike to the perspiration that bathed his forehead, to the dust that penetrated his nostrils, and to the dirt that took lodgment upon his hands.

Meanwhile, the thunder and lightning had ceased, and the rain had settled into a steady drizzle.

Elias's first notable find was a pretty little gold lead-pencil, one, he recognized, that had been sent him, as a present, on his twenty-first birthday, by an aunt of his—his father's only sister—who lived in New Orleans, and whom he had never seen. It had got lost, in a most inexplicable manner, very-soon after its reception; and, conscience-smitten, Elias now recollected how he had suspected, to the degree of moral certainty, a poor devil of an Italian model of having stolen it. Well, here it was, intact; and so, poor Archimede had been innocent, after all.

Holding it in his hand, and examining it a little, before putting it into his pocket, and going on with his work, Elias felt himself suddenly carried backward, for an instant, to the period with which it was associated. Talismanic pencil, that had power to raise the dead, and annihilate the intervening years! There it lay, in shape, weight, color, in length, breadth, thickness, in all its attributes and dimensions, precisely the same as on that far-off birthday morning, when his mother, to whose care his aunt had entrusted it, delivered it to him, neatly boxed up in pasteboard, wrapped in tissue-paper, and sealed with red sealing-wax. How well he remembered! It might have been last week. It might almost have been yesterday. And yet, how much, indeed how much, had happened since. At the breakfast-table, she had said, “Here, Elias, here is something your Aunt Rachel has sent you—something that you will prize especially, because she is not at all rich, and has doubtless had to pinch and deny herself, in order to buy it.” Then she offered him the parcel, which he, touched, surprised, expectant, took and opened, finding within this same little pencil; and not it only, but wound around it, a bit of writing in his Aunt Rachel's hand—the traditional Hebrew bensch: “May the Lord make you to be great, like Ephraim and Manasseh!” And immediately, of course, in his boyish enthusiasm, he had set himself down, and put the pencil to its virgin use, by inditing with it a glowing note of thanks—about the only use he ever had put it to, for very soon afterward it disappeared. And then, the rest, the rest of that wonderful, never-to-be-forgotten day! The pride and the triumph of it! The masterpiece of a dinner that his mother had prepared. The check for a dazzling sum of money, that he had found adroitly folded in with his napkin! The toothsome nut-cake, with its twenty-one symbolic candles! The wine that had been drunken to his health! The speech that the rabbi had made, standing up at the head of the table, and haranguing away as though he had had an audience of a thousand, instead of only Elias and his mother—the mother, however, listening amid tears and smiles, and applauding and nodding her head, as the splendid achievements which the future was to behold at the hands of her son, were prophetically described. The watch the rabbi had given him!—the same that was ticking in his waistcoat-pocket at this very instant. And the prayer that the rabbi had chanted! And how Elias himself, with swelling heart, had joined in the invocation: “Holy, holy Lord, Thou Who art one God!” and had vowed silently that, by the Lord's help, he would “strive to become good in the sight of men, and a pride unto his people.” How well he remembered, thanks to this little pencil, precisely the same now as then, quite unchanged. But oh, what a changed Elias, he in whose palm it lay! How all the conditions of his life, and all his interests and purposes in life, and all his convictions about life, had changed since then! How little he had dreamed in those days of what was coming! Strange, that he should have had no premonition of it. Strange, that he should have gone on in peace and contentment, treading his level path, forward, forward, unsuspectingly, and never have caught a glimpse, never have got an inkling, of what was waiting for him, of what each step was bringing him so much the nearer to, of what presently was to burst upon him in a glory like that of heaven, and utterly revolutionize himself and all his world. Strange, indeed! And yet, in those old, simple, tranquil days, he had been happy, very happy, in a simple, tranquil way; and now, as he looked back at them, they shone suffused in a rose-colored enchantment; and he could feel his heart reach out toward them, with a strong longing affection, which, though melancholy, was not unmixed with sweetness.

Deep, engrossing, and of long duration, was the train of associations that had thus been started. The church clock across the park rang the half hour, before Elias finally roused himself, and renewed his attack upon the lumber heap.

For a good while he struck nothing more of interest—nothing that he cared to save, or even to look at twice. But by and by he fished out a sketch-book, which, to judge from the dilapidated state of its binding, must have been pretty old, and over which he paused, beating it against the floor, to rid it of some of its dust, and then opening it, to inspect its contents. On the fly-leaf he found his initials, “E. B.,” and a date, “January, 1876.” Listlessly turning the pages, he was somewhat amused, and a good deal ashamed, to perceive how poor and crude the drawings were—heads, for the most part, with only here and there a full-length figure; and he congratulated himself not a little that he had thus chanced to run across it, because now he could destroy it, and so make sure that nobody else should ever have the satisfaction of seeing what wretched stuff he had once been capable of perpetrating. He supposed that the sketches had nearly all been intended as portraits, but in the main he could not place them—could not remember the persons who had served as models. One face kept repeating itself; there were as many as a dozen separate studies of it; the face of a young man, aged, presumably, nineteen or twenty years; strangely familiar; the face of some one, beyond doubt, whom he must have known intimately; and yet, knitting his brows, and exerting his memory to the utmost, he was quite unable to recall the original. Odd; and intensely annoying, as baffled memory is apt to be; until, of a sudden, with a thrill of recognition that was by no means agreeable, he identified it as himself. A few pages further along, again with a sudden thrill, but this time with a far stronger and deeper one, he came upon a portrait of his mother. It was badly drawn, finical, over-elaborated; the draperies rigid as iron; the flesh wooden; the pose—she was seated, reading—awkward, and anatomically impossible; and yet, spite of all, it was an excellent, even a startling, likeness; and-happening upon it in this unexpected manner, Elias felt a not unnatural heart-leap and quickening of the pulse. When, or under what circumstances, he had made it, he could not think. He bent forward in his chair, gazed intently at it, and tried hard to recollect. If the date on the fly-leaf was trustworthy, it must, of course, have been after the first of January, 1876; but in his own memory, ransack it as he might, he could find no record; This struck him as exceedingly singular; because, he believed, he had been careful to preserve all the sketches of his mother that he had ever taken, even the most primitive and rudimentary; and how this one could not only have got mislaid, but entirely have escaped his mind, besides, he was at a complete loss to understand. So bending forward, and gazing intently at it, he tried his best to recollect.

Of what now befell, or seemed to befall, I shall give an account written some two years later by Elias himself, in a letter to Christine:

“Gradually—as is apt to happen, if you fix your eyes for any length of time upon a single spot in some small object—gradually the picture blurred, becoming simply a formless smudge upon the white surface of the paper; a lapse on the part of my eyesight, which I, absorbed in the effort I was making to remember, did not attempt to correct, but which in due time, as was natural, corrected itself; and again the picture stood out as distinct as before. Now, however, at once, every other thought and every other feeling were swept away, clean out of my head, by a sensation—I shall not be able to define it; you will easily conceive it; a sensation half of amazement, half of terror; for, without having changed in size, the face seemed to have changed totally in quality; it seemed to have ceased to be a face drawn with black lead upon paper, and to have become a face in veritable flesh and blood. The hair had apparently become hair. There was color in the cheeks. And the eyes were liquid, living eyes. They—the eyes—were what most affected me. Large, black, mournful, as her eyes had been in life, they looked into my eyes with an expression—I can't describe it. It was what you would call an expression of intense agony, and of appeal; as though it were an agony of my causing, and one that she appealed to me to relieve. The lips—bluish white, as her lips were, toward the end of her life—the lips seemed to move, and kept moving, as if trying to speak, but unable to; until at last they succeeded; and I could have vowed that I heard, in her own recognizable voice, just a little above a whisper, these words: 'There is no more chance of its taking place than there is of the sun's failing to rise. Beware!'—the words that my uncle had spoken down stairs. I was so much startled, so much terrified, that I jumped up from my chair. Thereat, instantly, the illusion ended. Again it was only a crude pencil drawing upon the page of my sketch-book. I can't tell how long it had lasted. Very likely not longer than two or three seconds, though it seemed at least as many minutes. I don't think I had breathed once. I don't think my heart had given a single beat. It had literally paralyzed me with fear.

“But now that it was over, I fell back upon my chair, and my heart began to pound like a hammer against my side; and I sat there, panting and perspiring, like a man exhausted by some tremendous physical exertion. I felt sick and dizzy, and had a racking headache.—Of course, it was a mere optical delusion; a mere hallucination; not an actual, objective phenomenon, not a ghost; a mere projection from my own imagination. A long time afterward I talked with a physician about it. The substance of what he said was this: Consider the steadily increasing excitement under which my mind had been laboring for many days, in view of our approaching marriage; consider the interview that I had had with my uncle, only an hour or two earlier, and the high pitch of agitation to which it had wrought me up; consider that it was long past my customary bedtime, and that my brain was irritated by lack of sleep, for I had not slept much of any the night before; consider that my mother was just then the one person uppermost in my thoughts, having been vividly recalled to me first by the pencil I had found, and then by the drawing that I was looking at; consider finally that my bodily posture—bending over till my chest nearly touched my knees—was such as to keep the blood pent up in my head; and the occurrence becomes very easily explicable, especially so, as such hallucinations, when people are excited, are not uncommon experiences. This is what the medical man said. It is undoubtedly true; and something like it I had wit enough to tell myself immediately, at the time. But telling did no good. It is one thing to satisfy your judgment; another to tranquilize your feelings and hush your imagination. They choose to accept the direct testimony of your eyes and ears, rather than the deductions of your common sense.

“I knew, as I have said, that my nerves had simply played me a trick; but that knowledge did not prevent me from passing a most wretched, uncomfortable night—the rest of that night, till day-break. The memory of the thing persisted in haunting me, in spite of the efforts I made to forget it. Strive as I might, I could not shake off the fear, the uneasiness, that it had inspired. Thinking of it, even at this distance, I still wince a little. It produced a very deep impression, and must have been, I believe, in large part accountable for, as it was of a piece with, what happened next day—or, rather, the evening of the same day, for it was now early morning.”

XI.

ELIAS speaks of “day-break”; but it can not accurately be said that the day broke at all that morning. The blackness of the night slowly faded into a dismal, lifeless drab. It rained. The wind blew from the north-east. Under it, the branches of the trees, across in the park, swayed strenuously to and fro. The sparrows, with sadly bedraggled plumage, huddled together upon the window-sills, and raised their voices in noisy disputation, as if thereby seeking to screw their courage up, and not mind the%sorry weather. The milkman's wagon came rattling down the street. The milkman wore a rubber overcoat. His war-whoop sounded less spirited, less defiant, than its wont.

By and by Elias looked at his watch. It was getting along toward seven o'clock. Just then somebody rapped upon his studio door. Elias's nerves must indeed have been in a bad way. He started, paled, trembled, recovered himself, and called out, “Come in.”

It was the rabbi.

“Good morning, Elias,” the rabbi said.

“Good morning,” responded Elias, with a none too hospitable inflection.

“So, you haven't been abed? You've been sitting up all night?” the rabbi questioned.

“How do you know that?” was Elias's counter-question.

“I looked for you in your bedroom, and saw that your bed had not been slept in.”

“Oh.”

After a pause, “What have you been doing, up alone all night?” the rabbi asked.

“Lots of things. A man on the eve of his marriage has plenty to do.”

The rabbi stood still for a little while, glancing around the room. Then he sat down. At which, Elias rose.

“If you'll excuse me,” he said, “I'll go down stairs. I haven't taken my bath yet.”

“Have you said your prayers yet?” inquired the rabbi.

But Elias was already beyond ear-shot in the hall.

When, perhaps a quarter hour later, Elias, emerging from his bath, entered his bedroom, he discovered the rabbi established there at the window.

Wheeling about, and facing his nephew, “You didn't answer my question,” the rabbi said.

“What question?”

“I asked whether you had said your prayers this morning.”

“Oh.”

“Well, have you?”

“No.”

“Perhaps lately you have got out of the habit of saying your prayers—yes?”

Elias made no reply. He appeared not to have heard. He was busy fastening the buttons into a shirt-bosom.

“I'll wait till you've finished dressing,” said the rabbi.

He went to the window, and stood looking out.

The rabbi's presence troubled Elias exceedingly. But, he thought, considering every thing, the least he could do would be to put up with it as graciously as possible and not grumble. “What do you want with me, any how?” it was his impulse to demand. But he held his tongue, and proceeded with his toilet.

When at last he had tied his cravat and buttoned his coat, “Are you ready now to come down stairs with me?” the rabbi began.

“What for?”

“Several things. Are you ready? Will you come?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” Elias answered, and followed the old man from the room.

To himself: “I don't care what he does or says. It may be annoying, but it can't do any serious harm. To-day is the last day; and I'll let him him have his own way in every thing, no matter how absurd and exasperating it may be. I'll keep my temper and treat him respectfully, no matter how hard he may try me.”

They had reached the front hall of the house. The rabbi put his hand upon the knob of the front parlor door.

“Oh,” Elias exclaimed, drawing back, “are you going in there?”

“Yes.”

Calling to mind his resolution, Elias gulped down his unwillingness, and said, “Oh, well; all right.” But it cost him an effort to do so.

Even during his mother's life-time, the front parlor had been but very seldom used. Since her death, it had not been used at all. Indeed, since the day of her funeral, now nearly three years gone by, Elias had not crossed its threshold. The blinds and windows were kept permanently closed, save when, once a week, the servants entered to sweep and dust.

Now the rabbi pushed open the door, and, stepping aside, signalled Elias to pass in. Elias obeyed. The rabbi followed.

It was dark inside. Only a few pallid rays of daylight leaked through at the edges of the curtains. The air was cold and at the same time oppressive—laden with that stuffy, musty odor, which always pervades an uninhabited, shut-up room. At first, Elias could scarcely see an arm's-length before his face; but, as his eyesight gradually accustomed itself to the obscurity, he was able to make out the forms of the furniture, and to discern upon the walls sundry large black patches which he knew to be pictures.

The rabbi struck a match.

“Take it,” he said to Elias, “and light the gas; I'm not tall enough.”

Elias did as he was bidden.

The gas-burner, from disuse, had got clogged with dust. It shot a long, slim tongue of flame up into the air, and gave off a shrill, continuous whistle. Every now and then the flame had a convulsion, the whistle dropped a note or two; then both returned to their original conditions.

For a New York dwelling-house, it was a spacious room, this parlor; say, in width twenty feet, by forty in depth. The chairs and sofas, scrupulously wrapped in linen, were ranged along the walls. Over the carpet, completely covering it, stretched a broad sheet of grayish crash. The piano wore a rubber jacket, and had its legs swathed in newspapers. The books in the bookcases—books of the decorative, rather than of the readable order, for the most part—were locked up behind glass doors. The tall mirror, between the windows, shone through a veil of pink mosquito-netting. Supplies of the same material had been stretched across all the pictures.

In front of one of these pictures—that which hung above the mantel-piece—the rabbi now paused, and, raising his arm, pointed to it, in silence.

It was the portrait of a gentleman, full length, life-size, done in oils. The gentleman rested one hand upon a pile of ponderous, calf-bound volumes—law-books, or medical works, they looked like—that towered aloft from the floor. In his other hand, he held an unrolled scroll of parchment, upon which big black Hebrew characters were inscribed. Of artistic value the picture had little, or none at all; but it had another sort of value: it was a portrait of Elias's father.

The rabbi pointed to it in silence. Elias thought the rabbi's proceeding a little theatrical; but he made no comment.

By and by the rabbi lowered his arm, and faced about. Having done which, he raised his other arm, and this time brought his index finger to bear upon a portrait of Elias's mother.

Theatrical, certainly; disagreeably so, too; Elias thought.

At this point there befell an interruption which had somewhat the effect of an anti-climax. The breakfast-bell rang.

“Well,” said the rabbi, “let's go to breakfast.”

Elias turned off the gas. They left the parlor, and went down stairs to the dining-room.

There, having taken their places at the table, the rabbi extracted a handkerchief from his pocket, and with it covered his head. Elias did likewise. Whereupon the rabbi chanted the usual grace before meat. At its conclusion, both he and Elias replaced their handkerchiefs in their pockets, and the maid-servant brought the coffee.

For a while neither nephew nor uncle spoke.

At last, “What are you thinking about, Elias?” the rabbi asked.

“I was thinking, if you wish to know,” Elias answered, “of my great happiness—of the fact that to-day the lady whom I love is to become my wife.”

“Ah, so? It doesn't seem to improve your appetite,” returned the rabbi. “You're not eating especially well.”

He made Elias the object of a curious, meditative glance; then pursued: “Don't misunderstand me, Elias. It isn't at all my aim to dissuade you from this marriage. That, as I told you last night, would be a work of supererogation. But I should like to ask you just a single question. Suppose your mother were still alive, would you entertain for an instant the idea of marrying a Christian?”

“I don't know?”

“You don't know?”

“Well, probably not.”

“Good. That is what I thought. And now, let me ask you one question more. Is it your opinion that, simply because your mother has died, you are absolved from all obligations toward her, and are at liberty to act in a way, which, if she were still with us, it would break her heart to have you act in? Is that your opinion?”

Elias did not reply. He colored up, however, and bit his lip.

The rabbi waited a moment, then queried, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“You don't answer.”

“I don't mean to answer. It isn't a fair question,” said Elias.

The rabbi gave a short, contemptuous laugh.

Again for a while neither of them spoke. Elias was uncomfortably conscious that the rabbi's eyes were fixed upon his face. He stood it as long as he could. Then, abruptly, he got up.

“Please excuse me,” he said, “I have something to do up-stairs.”

With which he left the room.

He went to his studio and locked the door behind him. He had told the rabbi that he had something to do. But the truth was that he had nothing to do, except to kill time as best he could until the hour should arrive for him to start for Sixty-third Street. He had arranged not to call upon Christine at all that day. He thought it would be more considerate to leave her alone with her father. Now, the day stretched out like an eternity before his imagination. Would it ever wear away?

It occurred to him that it might not be a bad plan to get some sleep, if he could; so he retired to his bedroom, and threw himself all dressed upon his bed.

Pretty soon he heard a rap upon the door.

“Who is it?” he demanded.

“I,” the rabbi's voice responded. .

“He'll end by driving me mad,” thought Elias. “What do you want?” he asked aloud.

“I want to see you.”

“Well, I'm busy.”

“I shan't interfere with your business.”

“I'm going to sleep.”

“I shan't prevent you from sleeping.”

Elias said nothing further. The rabbi came in. “I only wanted to sit with you. It is better that I should be on hand,” explained the rabbi, and sat down near the window.

Elias closed his eyes and tried hard to sleep. But he could not sleep. It is doubtful whether, in view of his approaching wedding, he could have slept, under the most soothing circumstances. Under the actual circumstances, it was like trying to sleep while some one is sticking pins into you. Elias strove to be philosophical. “Why should I allow his mere presence to irritate me as it does?” he asked himself. Whatever the correct answer to this inquiry may have been, the fact remained that the rabbi's mere presence did irritate him to an excessive degree. He bore it for a few minutes silently. At length, flinging his philosophy overboard, he jumped up from his bed, and announced vehemently, “Well, I'm going out.”

“Ah,” said the rabbi, quietly, “I'll go with you.”

“Thanks,” replied Elias, “but I prefer to go alone.”

“I'm sorry,” said the rabbi; “but it is my duty.”

“What's your duty?”

“It is my duty not to let you leave my sight today.”

At this Elias lost his self-control.

“In heaven's name,” he blurted out, “do—do you mean to say that you're going to stick to me like this all day?”

“I should fail in my duty toward you, if I did not.”

“Well then, do you—do you know what you'll do?” cried Elias, in a loud, infuriated voice.

“No; what?” questioned the rabbi, composedly.

“Good God! You—you'll drive me out of my senses. You make me feel as though my head would split open. You—you—” His voice choked in his throat. His face had become burning red.

“Look out,” said the rabbi. “You'll burst a blood-vessel, if you carry on like that.”

“Well, then, for mercy's sake, leave me alone. Go down stairs about your business. Leave me here to attend to mine.”

The rabbi did not speak. He made no move to obey.

“Don't you hear?” Elias cried.

“Yes.”

“Well, why don't you go?”

“I have told you. It is my duty to stay.”

“God help me, if you weren't an old man, and my uncle, I—I'd—” Elias faltered. His clenched fists completed the sentence.

“Put me out? But I am an old man, and your uncle; and so you won't, eh?” rejoined the rabbi, with maddening coolness.

“You must forgive me,” said Elias, recovering a little his self-possession. “I ought not to have threatened you. I didn't mean to. But you don't know how you make me suffer. You don't know what torture it is.”

“Oh, that's all right. You needn't apologize,” the rabbi said.

“But what I ask,” Elias went on, “I ask as a kindness, please leave me alone.”

“That,” returned the rabbi, “is a request which I am compelled to deny.”

Elias stood still for an instant, as if undetermined what to do. He felt the blood rush angrily to his brain, and then sink away, leaving a violent ache behind it. “Well, I suppose I'll have to grin and bear it, then,” he said by and by, and dropped upon a chair.

After an interval of silence Elias began, with sufficient coolness, “Would you mind telling me why you consider it your duty to remain with me all day?”

“It is my duty to be on hand, to be at your side, when the moment of your need shall arrive. It may be any moment now.”

“Of my need? I don't understand.”

“When the Lord manifests Himself,” the rabbi explained.

“Oh,” said Elias, and relapsed into silence. He added presently, “I'm going down stairs, to get a glass of water,” and rose.

“You'll come back?” questioned the rabbi, “Yes, I suppose so.”

But when he had reached the foot of the staircase, and saw his hat hanging from the rack near the vestibule door, a temptation presented itself which was too strong for flesh and blood to resist. He caught his hat up, and put it upon his head, and dashed out into the street. It was raining. He had no umbrella. But he did not mind. He walked rapidly, without an objective point, without even noticing what direction he followed.

XII

AT first, as might have been expected, Elias's sensation was simply one of immense relief—relief to have got clear of the house, to have escaped the forced companionship of his uncle. But, of course, the inherent elasticity of healthy human nature was bound ere long to assert itself. There was bound to ensue not relief only, but reaction. A weight had been lifted from off his spirits; they, compliant to the law of their being, rebounded—sprang up far above their ordinary level. From unwonted depression, his mood leaped to unwonted exaltation. It seemed as though a great billow of happiness broke over him, and sent a glow of delicious warmth penetrating to the innermost fibers of his consciousness. A flood of jubilant thoughts broke loose in his brain, and swept away the last vestige of disquiet that had been lurking there. Forgotten were the pains and fears of the night; sunken quite out of mind, the exasperation and the anger of the past few hours. The love of Christine burned hot in his heart. The realization that this very night she was to become his bride, his wife, radiated like a light through his senses. So intense, indeed, was his thought of her, that he could all but see her in visible shape before him, smiling upon him through her bright brown eyes, offering him her sweet red lips to kiss. He could all but feel the warmth and softness of her hand in his, and breathe the dainty perfume which, flowerlike, she shed upon the air that circled round her. His joy lent lightness to his footstep. If he had worn the winged sandals of Mercury, he could not have marched along with greater buoyancy or speed. It sharpened all his faculties for pleasure, and deadened all his sensibilities to discomfort, like rich, strong wine. The rain, beating through his clothing, and wetting his skin—that was a pleasure. The wind, blowing in his face, brisk and cold—that was a pleasure. It was a pleasure to tread the soppy, slippery sidewalk, a pleasure to gaze down the long, dark vistas of the streets. The atmosphere, rain-cleansed, had a fresh, invigorating smell.

He wanted very much to go and see his ladylove, but he debated with himself whether he had better. In the first place, it seemed only right and delicate not to intrude upon the privacy of father and daughter this last day. It seemed as though he owed this much to Redwood. But then, too, as she did not expect him, he would have to explain the reasons for his coming; and he was loth to tell her the story of what had happened since their leave-taking of last night. It would distress and worry her; and would it not, also, reveal a certain weakness, at least a too great impressionability, in himself? Besides, to descend to minor considerations, with garments dripping wet, he was in no fit state to present himself before her. He would be sure to excite her apprehension lest he had caught a cold. Excellent arguments against yielding to his inclination, unquestionably; notwithstanding which, however, and even while his brain was busy formulating them, his muscles of locomotion, controlled by his unconscious will, were bearing him steadily and rapidly toward the quarter of the city in which Christine lived. And by and by, with a good deal of surprise, he found that he had arrived at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Sixty-third Street, and was within eye-shot of Redwood's door.

Here he halted. The arguments against proceeding pressed upon him with renewed force. He cast a longing glance over at the house, swallowed his desire, right-about faced, and walked away.

A few strides brought him to the edge of Central Park. He turned in. The park, of course, was deserted. A single moist and melancholy policeman kept guard at the gate. His features betokened a gloomy, phlegmatic wonder, as Elias, without an umbrella, passed him by.

The air in the park bore a racy, earthy odor, brought out by the rain. The young leaves of the trees, pale green, fluttered in bright contrast against the background of dull gray cloud. The greensward had profited by its bath, and gleamed with a silken luster. It was very quiet. The pattering of the rain-drops, the rustling of the foliage in the wind, and now and then the note of a venturesome bird, were the only sounds. Of town noises, there were none. New York might have lain a hundred leagues away. All of which Elias, as he trudged along, was dimly but agreeably aware of. It had cost him dear to give up his wish to see his sweetheart; and now he was seeking consolation among these leafy pathways, where he and she had so often sauntered side by side, and where every thing vividly recalled her. Ere a great while he had reached that pine-topped rock which had been their habitual resting-place, and was to be—! He climbed to the summit of it. He had never before been here without her. His heart throbbed hard, so strong and so sweet were the memories that thronged upon him.

But, standing still, he pretty soon began to realize that a wet skin is not after all an unmitigated luxury. He began to feel cold. It occurred to him for the first time that he had perhaps been imprudent, that at any rate he had better go home now, and get into dry clothes. Yet, if he went home, he would have to meet the rabbi again; and, by the by, the rabbi doubtless supposed that he had deliberately deceived him—had slipped out of the room on the pretext of wanting a glass of water, with the deliberate intention of not coming back. But during his outing he had gained considerable fortitude; his repugnance for the notion of the rabbi's society had abated a good deal; and, looking forward, he thought that he should not find it half so objectionable as he had done a while ago. For the matter of deception, the rabbi was at liberty to believe whatever he chose. Such deception would have been justifiable, any how—would have been practiced in self-defense.

He looked at his watch, and saw with astonishment that it was three o'clock. He had taken no note of time, but he was surprised to learn that so much had glided by. He would have to go home, any way, before long now, to make ready for the evening. Without further delay, he turned his face toward the outlet of the park, and marched off at a rapid gait.

He let himself into the house as noiselessly as he could, mounted directly to his bedroom, shot the bolt, and at once set about changing his clothes. But in a very few minutes there came a tap at the door. He knew perfectly well who it was: nevertheless, he called out, “Who's there?”

“I,” answered the rabbi.

“Well, what do you want?”

“I want to see you, You know what I want.”

“Well, I can't let you in just now. I'm undressed.”

“That makes no difference. I sha'n't mind that.”

“Oh, but I should mind it.”

The rabbi remained silent for a moment; then, “Do you think it was exactly honorable, the way you acted?” he inquired.

“What way?”

“Telling me an untruth, and then stealing out of the house?”

“I didn't mean to tell you an untruth. It was an inspiration, after I had left you. Any how, all's fair in love and war, you know.”

Elias chuckled softly to himself.

“What are you laughing at?” the rabbi asked. “I'm not laughing.”

“Well, nothing has happened? You're all right?”

“Yes; I haven't been struck by lightning yet.”

“Don't talk like that, Elias. It's blasphemous.” Elias made no answer.

Presently the rabbi said, “Well, aren't you ready to let me in yet?”

“No.”

“How soon will you be?”

“I don't know.”

“Five minutes?”

“No, I guess not. I guess not at all.”

“Why not?”

“Because, frankly, your presence is irksome to me.”

“How so?”

“Oh, I can't analyze it. You make me feel uncomfortable. Put yourself in my place, and you'll understand.”

“You're mistaken, Elias. It isn't I that makes you feel uncomfortable.”

“Who, then?”

“Nobody. It's your guilty conscience.”

“So? My guilty conscience doesn't trouble me much, when you're not around.”

“How about last night?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, it kept you awake all night, didn't it?”

“Oh.”

“Well, didn't it?”

“Gammon. I was busy, making my preparations for this evening.”

“Oh, that reminds me. At what time is it your intention to start?”

“Start?”

“Yes, for the place of the wedding.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“So as to be ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“To start with you.”

“Good heavens! You don't mean to say that you expect to go with me to the wedding?”

“Certainly.”

“O, well, really, I can't let you.”

“Why not?”

“I can't let you make a scene there. You may plague me as much as you like. But I can't have any disturbance at the wedding.”

“You ought to know me well enough not to fear my making a disturbance. I'm not in the habit of making disturbances.”

“Well, then, what do you want to go for?”

“Simply to be there.”

“But I thought—I thought my own going was to be prevented.”

“Oh, no, I never said that. You may be suffered to go. It is the performance of the wedding ceremony that will be prevented.”

“Oh, then you think the 'moment of my need' has been put off a little?”

“I don't know. I say, you may be permitted to continue straight up to the brink, but before the marriage is consummated, the Lord will interfere.”

“His confidence is weakening,” thought Elias, and held his tongue.

“Well?” questioned the rabbi.

“Well, what?”

“At what hour shall I be ready?”

“You promise not to make a row?”

“You needn't be afraid.”

“And to conduct yourself exactly as though you were an ordinary guest?”

“I generally conduct myself as a gentleman, don't I?”

“Well, then, I mean to leave here at a quarter before eight.”

“All right,” said the rabbi; “and now it is a quarter after four. Since you refuse to let me in, I'll go and sit in my own bedroom. I might catch cold, standing here in the hall. Call me if any thing should happen.”

For the sake of killing time, Elias dawdled as long as he could over his toilet. When, at length, it was completed, he picked up a book, and, seating himself at the window, tried to read. But it was no use. His mind wandered. The thought of his wedding was the only thought that he could keep fast hold of. He was very much excited and very impatient. He wished heartily that it was over and done with, and thus all room for doubt or accident excluded. He wondered how he would manage to survive the remaining hours. What a pity that he had not left something till the last moment to be attended to. Then he would have had an occupation. But, unfortunately, every arrangement was complete. He had packed all his trunks, and sent them off to the steamer. A shawl-strap and a hand-satchel were the only luggage not thus disposed of; and these, also, were packed and locked. Well, he must busy himself with something; and so by and by he proceeded slowly to unpack the hand-satchel, and thereupon forthwith to pack it over again. He had about finished, when the dinner-bell rang. That meant half-past six.

The dinner-bell sounded musically in Elias's ears, partly because he thought that he was hungry, chiefly because the process of dining would consume a certain quantity of time.

He found the rabbi already established at the table. He observed, with a half contemptuous, half annoyed, sense of its childishness, that the rabbi had discarded his customary white cravat for a black one—a thing which he never did except when he had a funeral to conduct.

The two men covered their heads. The rabbi intoned his grace. The servant brought in the eatables. Elias asked her to go out to the livery-stable, and order a carriage for a quarter to eight. She had been employed in the Bacharach household as long as Elias could remember, this servant, Maggie. Now she felt entitled to display a little friendly curiosity.

“Excuse me,” said she, “for asking; but is it true, Mr. Elias, that you're going to get married to-night?”

Elias was about to answer, when the rabbi interposed:

“Who has been putting such a notion into your head? Of course, it isn't true. When Mr. Elias gets married, you shall be invited to the wedding, Maggie.”

Elias did not care to join his uncle in debate. Maggie went off upon her errand. They dined without speaking. The gentle clink of their knives and forks sounded painfully distinct.

Elias's excitement, his nervousness, his impatience, were constantly becoming more intense. At every unexpected noise, no matter how slight or how commonplace, at every footstep in the hall, at every clatter of dishes in the kitchen, at every gust of wind upon the window-pane, he started and caught his breath. He felt his heart alternately growing hot and cold. Now it would leap with joy, at the thought of what was so near at hand; now it would cease beating, in spasmodic terror of some unknown calamity. It began to gallop tempestuously, when at last Elias heard the carriage rattle up, and stop before the house. “Oh,” he told himself, “it's only the way any man in my place would feel. One doesn't get married every day in the week.” His cheeks burned. His mouth was dry and feverish. His hands gave off a cold perspiration, and they shook like those of an old man.

The rabbi entered the carriage. Elias, having instructed the coachman where to drive, followed. The carriage moved off.

“At a church?” questioned the rabbi.

“No; at their house,” replied Elias.

“A large affair? Many guests?”

“Very few. Perhaps twenty-five or thirty. Their friends.”

“That's good. It would be a pity to have a crowd.”

After which both held their peace. Elias leaned back in his seat, and looked out of the window.

Now, not only his hands, but all his limbs, were trembling, quaking, as if he had the ague. He gritted his teeth firmly together to keep them from chattering. In his breast he was conscious of a vague, palpitating pain, very like extreme fear. He tried hard, but vainly, to exercise his will and his intelligence. In his brain all was bewilderment and confusion. Mechanically, he repeated to himself, “It is as every man in my place would feel.” But he did not believe it. His condition mystified him completely. He was suffering miserably. One thought alone rode clear above the mental hurricane: “Thank God, it will soon be over.” Meanwhile, in a dull, sick way, he was looking out of the window, and observing the progress of the carriage. Onward, onward, they were jolting, through the wet streets, where the sidewalks, like inky mirrors, gave back distorted images of the street lamps; past blazing shop-fronts, past jingling horse-cars, past solitary foot-passengers; ever nearer and nearer to their destination; and that sinking in his breast, and that uproar in his brain, ever growing more marked, more painful, more perplexing. A happy bridegroom driving to his wedding! More like a doomed criminal driving to the place of expiation. Presently they reached the great circle at the junction of Fifty-ninth Street and Eighth Avenue. Elias drew a long, deep breath, clenched his fists, straightened up, by a huge effort mustered a little self-possession, and announced faintly, “Well, we're almost there.” To his bewildered senses, his own voice sounded unfamiliar and far away.

A few seconds of acute suspense, and the carriage came to a stand-still in front of Redwood's door.

“Well,” began the rabbi, as Elias made no movement, “is this the house?”

“Yes.”

“Well, sha'n't we get out?”

“Yes, of course. But first, let me tell you. You go right into the parlor—at the left as we enter. I'll go straight up-stairs. For God's sake, remember your promise. Don't—don't make any disturbance here.”

They got out of the carriage, and climbed the stoop, over which an awning had been erected. The door was opened by a negro, in dress-suit and white gloves. The rabbi, pursuant to Elias's request, turned at once into the parlor, where already a half-dozen early arrivals were assembled. Elias, bearing the rabbi's hat and overcoat, hurried up the staircase to the room that had been set apart for him. There, having slammed the door behind him, he flung himself into an easy-chair, took his head between his hands, closed his eyes, and strove with might and main to summon a little strength, a little composure.

“There is no more chance of its taking place, than there is of the sun's failing to rise to-morrow morning”—that phrase had begun again to ring hideously in his ears.

Pretty soon he became aware that he was no longer alone. Somebody had entered the room, and was speaking to him. He looked up. Dazed and dizzy, as if through a veil, he saw old Redwood standing before him.

“Did you speak? What did you say?” he asked.

“I said how-d'ye-do,” answered Redwood. “You look sort of rattled. What's the matter with you?”

“Oh, nothing. I'm very well, thank you. How—where is Christine?”

“Oh, she's busy making her toilet—she and her friends. They've been at it pretty much all the afternoon. But, I say, brace up. Would you like something to drink?”

“No. Much obliged, but I—I'm all right. Only a little excited you know.”

“And, by the way, who was that old party that came in with ye—black and white?”

“Black and white?”

“Yes—black hair, white face—black tie, white collar—looks like a parson, and like an Israelite, at the same time.”

“Oh, that's my uncle—Dr. Gedaza.”

“You don't say so! So he's come around, has he? Relented, and got reconciled? Well, I must go down stairs, and clasp his fist.”

“No; don't please. That is, I wouldn't if I were you. Better let him alone,” said Elias.

“Why, man alive, why not? Mustn't I do the honors of the house?”

“Yes; but he—he's sort of eccentric. I wouldn't pay any attention to him. It might get him started, you understand.”

“Oh, well, you know him, I suppose; and if you say so, all right. But it don't seem just the thing not to bid him welcome. You'll have to excuse me, any how, now. The guests are arriving right along, and I must be on deck to receive 'em.”

Old Redwood departed. Elias felt rather better—less feverish and excited, but somewhat dull and weak.

In a few minutes Redwood reappeared.

“Come,” he cried. “Chris is ready—waiting for ye.”

Elias's heart bounding fiercely, he rose, and followed the old man through the hall into the front room. Christine advanced to meet him, a vision of dazzling whiteness. “Oh, I'm so afraid,” she whispered, as he folded her in his arms. Then, after he had released her, “Here, dear,” she said, and plucked a rosebud from her bouquet, and pinned it into his button-hole. Her fingers trembled. A truant wisp of golden hair lightly brushed his cheek.

“Now, children,” said old Redwood, “you understand the programme, do ye? I go in first, and stand up alongside the parson. You follow about a minute after, Christine leaning on Elias's left arm. Now the sooner you're ready the better. Shall I start?”

“Yes,” they answered.

He kissed his daughter, wrung Elias's hand, and left the room.

The clergyman stood between the front parlor windows. At a distance of two or three yards, the guests formed an irregular horse-shoe. There were a few young girls in bright colors, a few young men in white waistcoats and swallow-tails. The rest were elderly folk, the women in black silks, the men in black frock-coats. A goodly quantity of cut flowers, distributed about the room, refreshed the hot, close air.

There was a low buzz of conversation—which, however, abruptly subsided, as the door opened, and old Redwood marched gravely up, and took his position at the clergyman's right hand.

The inevitable hush of expectancy. All eyes focused upon the door. Through which, next instant, entered the bridal couple, and walked slowly forward to where they were awaited.

“Dearly beloved,” solemnly began the minister, “we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony”—and continued to the end of his preliminary address.

After a brief pause, he proceeded: “Elias, wilt thou have this woman, Christine, to thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking al! others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”—and again paused, waiting for Elias to respond.

A crimson flush suffused Elias's face, then, in an instant, faded to an intense waxen pallor. A film, a glassiness, appeared to form over the pupils of his eyes. His lips parted and twisted convulsively, writhing, as if in a desperate struggle to shape the expected words. Suddenly he threw his arm up into the air; a stifled, broken groan burst from his throat; he fell backward, head foremost, full length upon the floor, and lay there rigid, lifeless.

For a moment a breathless, startled stillness among the people. Then a quick outbreak of voices, and an eager pressing forward toward the spot where Elias had fallen.

Christine for a breathing-space remained motionless, aghast. All at once, “Oh, my God! He is dead—dead!” she cried, an agonized, heart-piercing cry, and sank upon her knees beside him, and flung herself sobbing upon his breast.

Parrot-like, the guests caught up her cry, and repeated it in low, awed tones among themselves: “He is dead. He has dropped down dead.”

The poor minister looked very badly scared, and as though he felt it incumbent upon him to say or to do something, without knowing what.

At first old Redwood himself had started back, completely staggered. But he very speedily recovered his presence of mind.

“Oh, no, he ain't dead either,” he called out.

“He's got a fit or something. Hey, Dr. Whipple, down there! Come up here—will ye?—and see what ye can do.”

The person thus appealed to, a tall old gentleman, with iron-gray hair, had gradually been elbowing his way to the front; and before Redwood had fairly spoken his last word, was bending over Elias, and gazing curiously at his face.

Close upon the doctor's heels came the rabbi. The rabbi's countenance wore a strangely inappropriate smile—one would have said, a smile of satisfaction.

“Well, doctor?” questioned Redwood.

“Oh, doctor, doctor,” cried Christine, looking up through her tears, “is—is he—?”

“No, no, my child,” answered the doctor, kindly. “He'll be as well as ever in an hour or two—only a bit head-achey and shaken up. There's no occasion for any alarm at all.” Turning to Redwood: “It's epilepsy. Does he have these attacks often?”

“I'm blamed if I knew he had them at all,” said Redwood. “How is it about that?” he asked, addressing the rabbi.

“He has never been troubled this way before,” the rabbi replied.

“Perhaps it's in his family?” questioned the doctor.

“Perhaps. I don't know,” the rabbi answered, though he did know perfectly well that Elias's father had died in an epileptic fit; a fact, by the way, of which Elias himself was ignorant.

“Brought on, then, by nervous excitement, worry, loss of sleep, or what not, I suppose. It will be interesting to note whether he ever has another,” the medical man concluded.

Christine, upon receiving the doctor's assurance that her lover was in no danger of death, had begun anew to sob upon his breast, more violently, if possible, than at first.

The clergyman had retired to the back parlor, and was discoursing of the mishap to a bevy of gaping guests.