"It will be seen--it will be declared," said Mordecai, triumphantly.
"The world grows, and its frame is knit together by the growing soul;
dim, dim at first, then clearer and more clear, the consciousness
discerns remote stirrings. As thoughts move within us darkly, and shake
us before they are fully discerned--so events--so beings: they are knit
with us in the growth of the world. You have risen within me like a
thought not fully spelled; my soul is shaken before the words are all
there. The rest will come--it will come.".

"We must not lose sight of the fact that the outward event has not
always been a fulfillment of the firmest faith," said Deronda, in a
tone that was made hesitating by the painfully conflicting desires, not
to give any severe blow to Mordecai, and not to give his confidence a
sanction which might have the severest of blows in reserve.

Mordecai's face, which had been illuminated to the utmost in that last
declaration of his confidence, changed under Deronda's words, not only
into any show of collapsed trust: the force did not disappear from the
expression, but passed from the triumphant into the firmly resistant.

"You would remind me that I may be under an illusion--that the history
of our people's trust has been full of illusion. I face it all." Here
Mordecai paused a moment. Then bending his head a little forward, he
said, in his hoarse whisper, "_So if might be with my trust, if you
would make it an illusion. But you will not._"

The very sharpness with which these words penetrated Deronda made him
feel the more that here was a crisis in which he must be firm.

"What my birth was does not lie in my will," he answered. "My sense of
claims on me cannot be independent of my knowledge there. And I cannot
promise you that I will try to hasten a disclosure. Feelings which have
struck root through half my life may still hinder me from doing what I
have never been able to do. Everything must be waited for. I must know
more of the truth about my own life, and I must know more of what it
would become if it were made a part of yours."

Mordecai had folded his arms again while Deronda was speaking, and now
answered with equal firmness, though with difficult breathing--

"You _shall_ know. What are we met for, but that you should know. Your
doubts lie as light as dust on my belief. I know the philosophies of
this time and of other times; if I chose I could answer a summons
before their tribunals. I