o clouds to come could hinder the cherishing beam of that
moment. As he held out his right hand to Mirah, who was close to her
brother's left, he laid his other hand on Mordecai's right shoulder,
and stood so a moment, holding them both at once, uttering no word, but
reading their faces, till he said anxiously to Mirah, "Has anything
happened?--any trouble?"

"Talk not of trouble now," said Mordecai, saving her from the need to
answer. "There is joy in your face--let the joy be ours."

Mirah thought, "It is for something he cannot tell us." But they all
sat down, Deronda drawing a chair close in front of Mordecai.

"That is true," he said, emphatically. "I have a joy which will remain
to us even in the worst trouble. I did not tell you the reason of my
journey abroad, Mordecai, because--never mind--I went to learn my
parentage. And you were right. I am a Jew."

The two men clasped hands with a movement that seemed part of the flash
from Mordecai's eyes, and passed through Mirah like an electric shock.
But Deronda went on without pause, speaking from Mordecai's mind as
much as from his own--

"We have the same people. Our souls have the same vocation. We shall
not be separated by life or by death."

Mordecai's answer was uttered in Hebrew, and in no more than a loud
whisper. It was in the liturgical words which express the religious
bond: "Our God and the God of our fathers."

The weight of feeling pressed too strongly on that ready-winged speech
which usually moved in quick adaptation to every stirring of his fervor.

Mirah fell on her knees by her brother's side, and looked at his now
illuminated face, which had just before been so deathly. The action was
an inevitable outlet of the violent reversal from despondency to a
gladness which came over her as solemnly as if she had been beholding a
religious rite. For the moment she thought of the effect on her own
life only through the effect on her brother.

"And it is not only that I am a Jew," Deronda went on, enjoying one of
those rare moments when our yearnings and our acts can be completely
one, and the real we behold is our ideal good; "but I come of a strain
that has ardently maintained the fellowship of our race--a line of
Spanish Jews that has borne many students and men of practical power.
And I possess what will give us a sort of communion with them. My
grandfather, Daniel Charisi, preserved manuscripts, family records
stretching far back, in the hope t