own experience of
the small room that ardor can make for itself in ordinary minds had had
the effect of increasing his reserve; and while tolerance was the
easiest attitude to him, there was another bent in him also capable of
becoming a weakness--the dislike to appear exceptional or to risk an
ineffective insistance on his own opinion. But such caution appeared
contemptible to him just now, when he, for the first time, saw in a
complete picture and felt as a reality the lives that burn themselves
out in solitary enthusiasm: martyrs of obscure circumstance, exiled in
the rarity of their own minds, whose deliverances in other ears are no
more than a long passionate soliloquy--unless perhaps at last, when
they are nearing the invisible shores, signs of recognition and
fulfilment may penetrate the cloud of loneliness; or perhaps it may be
with them as with the dying Copernicus made to touch the first printed
copy of his book when the sense of touch was gone, seeing it only as a
dim object through the deepening dusk.

Deronda had been brought near to one of those spiritual exiles, and it
was in his nature to feel the relation as a strong chain, nay, to feel
his imagination moving without repugnance in the direction of
Mordecai's desires. With all his latent objection to schemes only
definite in their generality and nebulous in detail--in the poise of
his sentiments he felt at one with this man who had made a visionary
selection of him: the lines of what may be called their emotional
theory touched. He had not the Jewish consciousness, but he had a
yearning, grown the stronger for the denial which had been his
grievance, after the obligation of avowed filial and social ties. His
feeling was ready for difficult obedience. In this way it came that he
set about his new task ungrudgingly; and again he thought of Mrs.
Meyrick as his chief helper. To her first he must make known the
discovery of Mirah's brother, and with her he must consult on all
preliminaries of bringing the mutually lost together. Happily the best
quarter for a consumptive patient did not lie too far off the small
house at Chelsea, and the first office Deronda had to perform for this
Hebrew prophet who claimed him as a spiritual inheritor, was to get him
a healthy lodging. Such is the irony of earthly mixtures, that the
heroes have not always had carpets and teacups of their own; and, seen
through the open window by the mackerel-vender, may have been invited