liking Christians. I think my mother was strict; but she could never
want me not to like those who are better to me than any of my own
people I have ever known. I think I could obey in other things that she
wished but not in that. It is so much easier to me to share in love
than in hatred. I remember a play I read in German--since I have been
here it has come into my mind--where the heroine says something like
that."

"Antigone," said Deronda.

"Ah, you know it. But I do not believe that my mother would wish me not
to love my best friends. She would be grateful to them." Here Mirah had
turned to Mrs. Meyrick, and with a sudden lighting up of her whole
countenance, she said, "Oh, if we ever do meet and know each other as
we are now, so that I could tell what would comfort her--I should be so
full of blessedness my soul would know no want but to love her!"

"God bless you, child!" said Mrs. Meyrick, the words escaping
involuntarily from her motherly heart. But to relieve the strain of
feeling she looked at Deronda and said, "It is curious that Mirah, who
remembers her mother so well it is as if she saw her, cannot recall her
brother the least bit--except the feeling of having been carried by him
when she was tired, and of his being near her when she was in her
mother's lap. It must be that he was rarely at home. He was already
grown up. It is a pity her brother should be quite a stranger to her."

"He is good; I feel sure Ezra is good," said Mirah, eagerly. "He loved
my mother--he would take care of her. I remember more of him than that.
I remember my mother's voice once calling, 'Ezra!' and then his
answering from a distance 'Mother!'"--Mirah had changed her voice a
little in each of these words and had given them a loving
intonation--"and then he came close to us. I feel sure he is good. I
have always taken comfort from that."

It was impossible to answer this either with agreement or doubt. Mrs.
Meyrick and Deronda exchanged a quick glance: about this brother she
felt as painfully dubious as he did. But Mirah went on, absorbed in her
memories--

"Is it not wonderful how I remember the voices better than anything
else? I think they must go deeper into us than other things. I have
often fancied heaven might be made of voices."

"Like your singing--yes," said Mab, who had hitherto kept a modest
silence, and now spoke bashfully, as was her wont in the presence of
Prince Camaralzaman--"Ma, do ask Mirah to sing. Mr.