nd saying good things as if they felt them, and directly after
I saw them with coarse, ugly manners. My father sometimes noticed my
shrinking ways; and Signora said one day, when I had been rehearsing,
'She will never be an artist: she has no notion of being anybody but
herself. That does very well now, but by-and-by you will see--she will
have no more face and action than a singing-bird.' My father was angry,
and they quarreled. I sat alone and cried, because what she had said
was like a long unhappy future unrolled before me. I did not want to be
an artist; but this was what my father expected of me. After a while
Signora left us, and a governess used to come and give me lessons in
different things, because my father began to be afraid of my singing
too much; but I still acted from time to time. Rebellious feelings grew
stronger in me, and I wished to get away from this life; but I could
not tell where to go, and I dreaded the world. Besides, I felt it would
be wrong to leave my father: I dreaded doing wrong, for I thought I
might get wicked and hateful to myself, in the same way that many
others seemed hateful to me. For so long, so long I had never felt my
outside world happy; and if I got wicked I should lose my world of
happy thoughts where my mother lived with me. That was my childish
notion all through those years. Oh how long they were!"

Mirah fell to musing again.

"Had you no teaching about what was your duty?" said Mrs. Meyrick. She
did not like to say "religion"--finding herself on inspection rather
dim as to what the Hebrew religion might have turned into at this date.

"No--only that I ought to do what my father wished. He did not follow
our religion at New York, and I think he wanted me not to know much
about it. But because my mother used to take me to the synagogue, and I
remembered sitting on her knee and looking through the railing and
hearing the chanting and singing, I longed to go. One day when I was
quite small I slipped out and tried to find the synagogue, but I lost
myself a long while till a peddler questioned me and took me home. My
father, missing me, had been much in fear, and was very angry. I too
had been so frightened at losing myself that it was long before I
thought of venturing out again. But after Signora left us we went to
rooms where our landlady was a Jewess and observed her religion. I
asked her to take me with her to the synagogue; and I read in her
prayer-books and Bible, an