ongs to breathing flesh; till by-and-by it seemed that
discouragement had turned into a new obstinacy of resistance, and the
ever-recurrent vision had the force of an outward call to disregard
counter-evidence, and keep expectation awake. It was Deronda now who
was seen in the often painful night-watches, when we are all liable to
be held with the clutch of a single thought--whose figure, never with
its back turned, was seen in moments of soothed reverie or soothed
dozing, painted on that golden sky which was the doubly blessed symbol
of advancing day and of approaching rest.

Mordecai knew that the nameless stranger was to come and redeem his
ring; and, in spite of contrary chances, the wish to see him again was
growing into a belief that he should see him. In the January weeks, he
felt an increasing agitation of that subdued hidden quality which
hinders nervous people from any steady occupation on the eve of an
anticipated change. He could not go on with his printing of Hebrew on
little Jacob's mind; or with his attendance at a weekly club, which was
another effort of the same forlorn hope: something else was coming. The
one thing he longed for was to get as far as the river, which he could
do but seldom and with difficulty. He yearned with a poet's yearning
for the wide sky, the far-reaching vista of bridges, the tender and
fluctuating lights on the water which seems to breathe with a life that
can shiver and mourn, be comforted and rejoice.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

"Vor den Wissenden sich stellen
Sicher ist's in alien Faellen!
Wenn du lange dich gequaelet
Weiss er gleich wo dir es fehlet;
Auch auf Beifall darfst du hoffen,
Denn er weiss wo du's getroffen,"
--GOETHE: _West-oestlicker Divan_.

Momentous things happened to Deronda the very evening of that visit to
the small house at Chelsea, when there was the discussion about Mirah's
public name. But for the family group there, what appeared to be the
chief sequence connected with it occurred two days afterward. About
four o'clock wheels paused before the door, and there came one of those
knocks with an accompanying ring which serve to magnify the sense of
social existence in a region where the most enlivening signals are
usually those of the muffin-man. All the girls were at home, and the
two rooms were thrown together to make space for Kate's drawing, as
well as a great length of embroidery which had taken the place of the
satin cushion