uck him as concurring
toward the desirable union with Mrs. Grandcourt, had called forth a
flash of revelation from Mirah--a betrayal of her passionate feeling on
this subject which had made him melancholy on her account as well as
his own--yet on the whole less melancholy than if he had imagined
Deronda's hopes fixed on her. It is not sublime, but it is common, for
a man to see the beloved object unhappy because his rival loves
another, with more fortitude and a milder jealousy than if he saw her
entirely happy in his rival. At least it was so with the mercurial
Hans, who fluctuated between the contradictory states of feeling,
wounded because Mirah was wounded, and of being almost obliged to
Deronda for loving somebody else. It was impossible for him to give
Mirah any direct sign of the way in which he had understood her anger,
yet he longed that his speechless companionship should be eloquent in a
tender, penitent sympathy which is an admissible form of wooing a
bruised heart.

Thus the two went side by side in a companionship that yet seemed an
agitated communication, like that of two chords whose quick vibrations
lie outside our hearing. But when they reached the door of Mirah's
home, and Hans said "Good-bye," putting out his hand with an appealing
look of penitence, she met the look with melancholy gentleness, and
said, "Will you not come in and see my brother?"

Hans could not but interpret this invitation as a sign of pardon. He
had not enough understanding of what Mirah's nature had been wrought
into by her early experience, to divine how the very strength of her
late excitement had made it pass more quickly into the resolute
acceptance of pain. When he had said, "If you will let me," and they
went in together, half his grief was gone, and he was spinning a little
romance of how his devotion might make him indispensable to Mirah in
proportion as Deronda gave his devotion elsewhere. This was quite fair,
since his friend was provided for according to his own heart; and on
the question of Judaism Hans felt thoroughly fortified:--who ever heard
in tale or history that a woman's love went in the track of her race
and religion? Moslem and Jewish damsels were always attracted toward
Christians, and now if Mirah's heart had gone forth too precipitately
toward Deronda, here was another case in point. Hans was wont to make
merry with his own arguments, to call himself a Giaour, and antithesis
the sole clue to events; but