entioned it to you?"

"Yes," said Mordecai; "that was the reason I came to the bridge."

This answer, made with simple gravity, was startlingly mysterious to
Deronda. Were the peculiarities of this man really associated with any
sort of mental alienation, according to Cohen's hint?

"You knew nothing of my being at Chelsea?" he said, after a moment.

"No; but I expected you to come down the river. I have been waiting for
you these five years." Mordecai's deep-sunk eyes were fixed on those of
the friend who had at last arrived with a look of affectionate
dependence, at once pathetic and solemn. Deronda's sensitiveness was
not the less responsive because he could not but believe that this
strangely-disclosed relation was founded on an illusion.

"It will be a satisfaction to me if I can be of any real use to you,"
he answered, very earnestly. "Shall we get into a cab and drive
to--wherever you wish to go? You have probably had walking enough with
your short breath."

"Let us go to the book-shop. It will soon be time for me to be there.
But now look up the river," said Mordecai, turning again toward it and
speaking in undertones of what may be called an excited calm--so
absorbed by a sense of fulfillment that he was conscious of no barrier
to a complete understanding between him and Deronda. "See the sky, how
it is slowly fading. I have always loved this bridge: I stood on it
when I was a little boy. It is a meeting-place for the spiritual
messengers. It is true--what the Masters said--that each order of
things has its angel: that means the full message of each from what is
afar. Here I have listened to the messages of earth and sky; when I was
stronger I used to stay and watch for the stars in the deep heavens.
But this time just about sunset was always what I loved best. It has
sunk into me and dwelt with me--fading, slowly fading: it was my own
decline: it paused--it waited, till at last it brought me my new
life--my new self--who will live when this breath is all breathed out."

Deronda did not speak. He felt himself strangely wrought upon. The
first-prompted suspicion that Mordecai might be liable to
hallucinations of thought--might have become a monomaniac on some
subject which had given too severe a strain to his diseased
organism--gave way to a more submissive expectancy. His nature was too
large, too ready to conceive regions beyond his own experience, to rest
at once in the easy explanation, "madness," whe