he poor, but made
them givers, organizing their own farthings into a powerful auxiliary of
the institutions which helped them. Hannah's sweet patience soothed
Esther, who had no natural aptitude for personal philanthropy; the
primitive, ordered pieties of the Reb's household helping to give her
calm. Though she accepted the inevitable, and had laughed in melancholy
mockery at the exaggerated importance given to love by the novelists
(including her cruder self), she dreaded meeting Raphael Leon. It was
very unlikely her whereabouts would penetrate to the West; and she
rarely went outside of the Ghetto by day, or even walked within it in
the evening. In the twilight, unless prostrated by headache, she played
on Hannah's disused old-fashioned grand piano. It had one cracked note
which nearly always spoiled the melody; she would not have the note
repaired, taking a morbid pleasure in a fantastic analogy between the
instrument and herself. On Friday nights after the Sabbath-hymns she
read _The Flag of Judah_. She was not surprised to find Reb Shemuel
beginning to look askance at his favorite paper. She noted a growing
tendency in it to insist mainly on the ethical side of Judaism,
salvation by works being contrasted with the salvation by spasm of
popular Christianity. Once Kingsley's line, "Do noble things, not dream
them all day long," was put forth as "Judaism _versus_ Christianity in a
nut-shell;" and the writer added, "for so thy dreams shall become noble,
too." Sometimes she fancied phrases and lines of argument were aimed at
her. Was it the editor's way of keeping in touch with her, using his
leaders as a medium of communication--a subtly sweet secret known only
to him and her? Was it fair to his readers? Then she would remember his
joke about the paper being started merely to convert her, and she would
laugh. Sometimes he repeated what he already said to her privately, so
that she seemed to hear him talking.

Then she would shake her head, and say, "I love you for your blindness,
but I have the terrible gift of vision."

CHAPTER XIV.

SIDNEY SETTLES DOWN.

Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's newest seaside resort had the artistic charm
which characterized everything she selected. It was a straggling, hilly,
leafy village, full of archaic relics--human as well as
architectural--sloping down to a gracefully curved bay, where the blue
waves broke in whispers, for on summer days a halcyon calm overhung this
magic spot, an