er intoxicating beauty. She gratified his artistic sense almost
completely. But she seemed to satisfy deeper instincts, too. As he
looked into her limpid, trustful eyes, he felt he had been a weak fool.
An irresistible yearning to tell her all his past and crave forgiveness
swept over him.

"Addie," he said, "isn't it funny I should be marrying a Jewish girl,
after all?"

He wanted to work round to it like that, to tell her of his engagement
to Miss Hannibal at least, and how, on discovering with whom he was
really in love, he had got out of it simply by writing to the Wesleyan
M.P. that he was a Jew--a fact sufficient to disgust the disciple of
Dissent and the claimant champion of religious liberty. But Addie only
smiled at the question.

"You smile," he said: "I see you do think it funny."

"That's not why I am smiling."

"Then why are you smiling?" The lovely face piqued him; he kissed the
lips quickly with a bird-like peck.

"Oh--I--no, you wouldn't understand."

"That means _you_ don't understand. But there! I suppose when a girl is
in love, she's not accountable for her expression. All the same, it is
strange. You know, Addie dear, I have come to the conclusion that
Judaism exercises a strange centrifugal and centripetal effect on its
sons--sometimes it repulses them, sometimes it draws them; only it never
leaves them neutral. Now, here had I deliberately made up my mind not to
marry a Jewess."

"Oh! Why not?" said Addie, pouting.

"Merely because she would be a Jewess. It's a fact."

"And why have you broken your resolution?" she said, looking up naively
into his face, so that the scent of her hair thrilled him.

"I don't know." he said frankly, scarcely giving the answer to be
expected. "_C'est plus fort que moi_. I've struggled hard, but I'm
beaten. Isn't there something of the kind in Esther--in Miss Ansell's
book? I know I've read it somewhere--and anything that's beastly subtle
I always connect with her."

"Poor Esther!" murmured Addie.

Sidney patted her soft warm hand, and smoothed the finely-curved arm,
and did not seem disposed to let the shadow of Esther mar the moment,
though he would ever remain grateful to her for the hint which had
simultaneously opened his eyes to Addie's affection for him, and to his
own answering affection so imperceptibly grown up. The river glided on
softly, glorified by the sunset.

"It makes one believe in a dogged destiny," he grumbled, "shaping the
ends o