azaris_ or Reader's grand wide-ranging voice with its passage from
monotony to sudden cries, the outburst of sweet boys' voices from the
little choir, the devotional swaying of men's bodies backward and
forward, the very commonness of the building and shabbiness of the
scene where a national faith, which had penetrated the thinking of half
the world, and moulded the splendid forms of that world's religion, was
finding a remote, obscure echo--all were blent for him as one
expression of a binding history, tragic and yet glorious. He wondered
at the strength of his own feeling; it seemed beyond the occasion--what
one might imagine to be a divine influx in the darkness, before there
was any vision to interpret. The whole scene was a coherent strain, its
burden a passionate regret, which, if he had known the liturgy for the
Day of Reconciliation, he might have clad in its authentic burden;
"Happy the eye which saw all these things; but verily to hear only of
them afflicts our soul. Happy the eye that saw our temple and the joy
of our congregation; but verily to hear only of them afflicts our soul.
Happy the eye that saw the fingers when tuning every kind of song; but
verily to hear only of them afflicts our soul."

But with the cessation of the devotional sounds and the movement of
many indifferent faces and vulgar figures before him there darted into
his mind the frigid idea that he had probably been alone in his
feeling, and perhaps the only person in the congregation for whom the
service was more than a dull routine. There was just time for this
chilling thought before he had bowed to his civil neighbor and was
moving away with the rest--when he felt a hand on his arm, and turning
with the rather unpleasant sensation which this abrupt sort of claim is
apt to bring, he saw close to him the white-bearded face of that
neighbor, who said to him in German, "Excuse me, young gentleman--allow
me--what is your parentage--your mother's family--her maiden name?"

Deronda had a strongly resistant feeling: he was inclined to shake off
hastily the touch on his arm; but he managed to slip it away and said
coldly, "I am an Englishman."

The questioner looked at him dubiously still for an instant, then just
lifted his hat and turned away; whether under a sense of having made a
mistake or of having been repulsed, Deronda was uncertain. In his walk
back to the hotel he tried to still any uneasiness on the subject by
reflecting that he co