ves music. Something like that, I think, has been my
experience. Since I began to read and know, I have always longed for
some ideal task, in which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a
multitude--some social captainship, which would come to me as a duty,
and not be striven for as a personal prize. You have raised the image
of such a task for me--to bind our race together in spite of heresy.
You have said to me--'Our religion united us before it divided us--it
made us a people before it made Rabbanites and Karaites.' I mean to try
what can be done with that union--I mean to work in your spirit.
Failure will not be ignoble, but it would be ignoble for me not to try."

"Even as my brother that fed at the breasts of my mother," said
Mordecai, falling back in his chair with a look of exultant repose, as
after some finished labor.

To estimate the effect of this ardent outpouring from Deronda we must
remember his former reserve, his careful avoidance of premature assent
or delusive encouragement, which gave to this decided pledge of himself
a sacramental solemnity, both for his own mind and Mordecai's. On Mirah
the effect was equally strong, though with a difference: she felt a
surprise which had no place in her brother's mind, at Deronda's
suddenly revealed sense of nearness to them: there seemed to be a
breaking of day around her which might show her other facts unlike her
forebodings in the darkness. But after a moment's silence Mordecai
spoke again--

"It has begun already--the marriage of our souls. It waits but the
passing away of this body, and then they who are betrothed shall unite
in a stricter bond, and what is mine shall be thine. Call nothing mine
that I have written, Daniel; for though our masters delivered rightly
that everything should be quoted in the name of him that said it--and
their rule is good--yet it does not exclude the willing marriage which
melts soul into soul, and makes thought fuller as the clear waters are
made fuller, where the fullness is inseparable and the clearness is
inseparable. For I have judged what I have written, and I desire the
body that I gave my thought to pass away as this fleshly body will
pass; but let the thought be born again from our fuller soul which
shall be called yours."

"You must not ask me to promise that," said Deronda, smiling. "I must
be convinced first of special reasons for it in the writings
themselves. And I am too backward a pupil yet. That blent t