edness.

"No, I think not," said Deronda; "but you know I was not brought up as
a Jew."

"Ah, I am always forgetting," said Mirah, with a look of disappointed
recollection, and slightly blushing.

Deronda also felt rather embarrassed, and there was an awkward pause,
which he put an end to by saying playfully--

"Whichever way we take it, we have to tolerate each other; for if we
all went in opposition to our teaching, we must end in difference, just
the same."

"To be sure. We should go on forever in zig-zags," said Mrs. Meyrick.
"I think it is very weak-minded to make your creed up by the rule of
the contrary. Still one may honor one's parents, without following
their notions exactly, any more than the exact cut of their clothing.
My father was a Scotch Calvinist and my mother was a French Calvinist;
I am neither quite Scotch, nor quite French, nor two Calvinists rolled
into one, yet I honor my parents' memory."

"But I could not make myself not a Jewess," said Mirah, insistently,
"even if I changed my belief."

"No, my dear. But if Jews and Jewesses went on changing their religion,
and making no difference between themselves and Christians, there would
come a time when there would be no Jews to be seen," said Mrs. Meyrick,
taking that consummation very cheerfully.

"Oh, please not to say that," said Mirah, the tears gathering. "It is
the first unkind thing you ever said. I will not begin that. I will
never separate myself from my mother's people. I was forced to fly from
my father; but if he came back in age and weakness and want, and needed
me, should I say, 'This is not my father'? If he had shame, I must
share it. It was he who was given to me for my father, and not another.
And so it is with my people. I will always be a Jewess. I will love
Christians when they are good, like you. But I will always cling to my
people. I will always worship with them."

As Mirah had gone on speaking she had become possessed with a sorrowful
passion--fervent, not violent. Holding her little hands tightly clasped
and looking at Mrs. Meyrick with beseeching, she seemed to Deronda a
personification of that spirit which impelled men after a long
inheritance of professed Catholicism to leave wealth and high place and
risk their lives in flight, that they might join their own people and
say, "I am a Jew."

"Mirah, Mirah, my dear child, you mistake me!" said Mrs. Meyrick,
alarmed. "God forbid I should want you to do anything a