"Another slummer."

"He's the son of an archdeacon."

"An awful Christian crank."

"And that's your pet Schnapsie."

"If _we_ had wanted Christians, we could have been married twenty years ago."

"It's a terrible disgrace for us."

"She doesn't consider us in the least."

"She'll be miserable, anyhow. When they quarrel, he'll always throw it up to her that she's a Jewess."

"And wouldn't join our Daughters of Mercy committee--had no time."

"Wasn't going to marry--turned up her nose at all the Jewish young men!"

"But she would have told me!" he murmured hopelessly. "I don't believe it. My little Schnapsie!"

"Don't believe it?" snorted Leah. "Why, she didn't even deny it."

"Have you spoken to her, then?"

"Have we spoken to her! Why, she says Judaism is all nonsense! She will disgrace us all."

The blind racial instinct spoke through them--the twenty-five centuries of tested separateness. But Daniel felt in super-addition the conscious religious horror.

"But is she to be married in a Christian church?" he breathed.

"Oh, she isn't going to marry--yet."

His poor heart fluttered at the reprieve.

"She doesn't care a pin for _our_ feelings," went on Leah. "But of course she won't marry while _you_ are alive."

Lily took up the thread. "We all told her if she'd only marry a Jew, we'd all be glad to have you--in turn. But she said it wasn't that.

She could have you herself; her Alfred wouldn't mind. It's the shock to your religious feelings that keeps her back. She doesn't want to hurt you."

"G.o.d bless her, my good little Schnapsie!" he murmured. His dazed brain did not grasp all the bearings, was only conscious of a vast relief.

Disgust darkened all the faces.

He groped to understand it, putting his hand over the white hairs that straggled from his skull-cap.

"But then--then it's all right."

"Yes, all right," said Leah brutally. "But for how long?"

Her meaning seized him like an icy claw upon his heart. For the first time in his life he realized the certainty of death, and simultaneously with the certainty its imminence.

"We want you to put a stop to it _now_," said Sylvia. "For our sakes make her promise that even when-- You're the only one who has any influence over her."

She rose, as if to wind up the painful interview, and the others rose, too, with a multiplex rustling of silken skirts. He shook the six jewelled hands as in a dream, and promised to do his best; and as he watched the little procession of carriages roll off, it seemed to him indeed a funeral, and his own.

VII

Ah G.o.d, that it should have come to this. Little Schnapsie could not be happy till he was dead. Well, why should he keep her waiting? What mattered the few odd years or months? He was already dead. There was his funeral going down the street.

To speak to Schnapsie he had never intended, even while he was promising it. Those years of silent life together had made real conversation impossible. The bridge on which his soul pa.s.sed over to hers was a bridge over which hung a sacred silence. Under the weight of words, especially of angry parental words, it might break down forever. And that would be worse than death.

No; little Schnapsie had her own life, and he somehow knew he had not the right to question it, even though it seemed on the verge of deadly sin. He could not have expressed it in logical speech, was not even clearly conscious of it; but his tender relation with her had educated him to a sense of her moral rightness, which now survived and subsisted with his conviction that she was hopelessly astray. No, he had not the right to interfere with her life, with her prospect of happiness in her own way. He must give up living. Little Schnapsie must be nearly thirty; the best of her youth was gone. She should be happy with this strange man.

But if he killed himself, that would bring disgrace on the family--and little Schnapsie. Perhaps, too, Alfred would not marry her. Was there no way of slipping quietly out of existence? But then suicide was another deadly sin. If only that had really been his funeral procession!

"O G.o.d, G.o.d of Israel, tell me what to do!"

VIII

A sudden inspiration leapt to his heart. She should not have to wait for his death to be happy; he would _live_ to see her happy. He would pretend that her marriage cost him no pang; indeed, would not truly the pang be swallowed up in the thought of her happiness? But _would_ she be happy? _Could_ she be happy with this alien? Ah, there was the chilling doubt! If a quarrel came, would not the man always throw it in her face that she was a Jewess? Well, that must be left to herself.

She was old enough not to rush into misery. Through all these years he had taken her pensive brow as the seat of all wisdom, her tender eyes as the glow of all goodness, and he could not suddenly readjust himself to a contradictory conception. By the time she came in he had composed himself for his task.

"Ah, my dear," he said, with a beaming smile, "I have heard the good news."

The answering smile died out of her eyes. She looked frightened.

"It's all right, little Schnapsie," he said roguishly. "So now I shall have seven sons-in-law. And Alfred the Second, eh?"

"You have heard?"

"Yes," he said, pinching her ear. "Thinks she can keep anything from her old father, does she?"

"But do you know that he is a--a--"

"A Christian? Of course. What's the difference, as long as he's a good man, eh?" He laughed noisily.

Little Schnapsie looked more frightened than ever. Were her father's wits wandering at last?

"But I thought--"

"Thought I would want you to sacrifice yourself! No, no, my dear; we are not in India, where women are burnt alive to please their dead husbands."

Little Schnapsie had an irrelevant vision of herself treading on diamonds and gold. She murmured, "Who told you?"

"Leah."