egin?"

The parson threw himself back in his chair, folded his hands, cast up
his eyes to the ceiling, and meditated. Anna waited, pencil in hand,
ready to write at his dictation. Frau Manske at the other end of the
room was straining her ears to hear what was going on, but Miss Leech,
desirous both of entertaining her and of practising her German, would
not cease from her spasmodic talk, even expecting her mistakes to be
corrected. And there were no refreshments, no glasses of cooling beer
being handed round, no liquid consolation of any sort, not even seltzer
water. She regarded her evening as a failure.

"A Christian lady of noble sentiments," dictated the parson, apparently
reading the words off the ceiling, "offers a home in her house----"

"Is this the advertisement?" asked Anna.

"--offers a home in her house----"

"I don't quite like the beginning," hesitated Anna. "I would rather
leave out about the noble sentiments."

"As the gracious one pleases. Modesty can never be anything but an
ornament. 'A Christian lady----'"

"But why a _Christian_ lady? Why not simply a lady? Are there, then,
heathen ladies about, that you insist on the Christian?"

"Worse, worse than heathen," replied the parson, sitting up straight,
and fixing eyeballs suddenly grown fiery on her; and his voice fell to a
hissing whisper, in strange contrast to his previous honeyed tones. "The
heathen live in far-off lands, where they keep quiet till our
missionaries gather them into the Church's fold--but here, here in our
midst, here everywhere, taking the money from our pockets, nay, the very
bread from our mouths, are the _Jews_."

Impossible to describe the tone of fear and hatred with which this word
was pronounced.

Anna gazed at him, mystified. "The Jews?" she echoed. One of her
greatest friends at home was a Jew, a delightful person, the mere
recollection of whom made her smile, so witty and charming and kind was
he. And of Jews in general she could not remember to have heard anything
at all.

"But not only money from our pockets and bread from our mouths,"
continued the parson, leaning forward, his light grey eyes opened to
their widest extent, and speaking in a whisper that made her flesh begin
the process known as creeping, "but blood--blood from our veins."

"Blood from your veins?" she repeated faintly. It sounded horrid. It
offended her ears. It had nothing to do with the advertisement. The
strange light in his eyes mad