s 'Yvonne Rupert' experience sobered him effectually.
What right, indeed, had he to force himself upon this woman, upon
these children, to whom he was dead? So might a suicide hope to win
back his place in the old life. Life had gone on without him--had no
need of him. Ah, what a punishment God had prepared for him! Closed
doors to the past, closed doors everywhere.

And this terrible sense of exclusion had not now the same palliative
of righteous resentment. With Yvonne Rupert, the splendid-flaming,
vicious ingrate, he had felt himself the sinned against. But before
this wife-widow, this dutiful, hard-working, tragic creature, he had
nothing but self-contempt. He tottered downstairs. How should he even
get his bread--he whose ill-fame was doubtless the gossip of the
Ghetto? If he could only get hold of Gideon's carving-knife!

VIII

But he did not commit suicide, nor did he starve. There is always one
last refuge for the failures of the Ghetto, and Elkan's easy
experience with the Jewish philanthropist had prepared the way for
dealings with the Christian.

To-day the Rev. Moses Elkan, 'the converted Jew,' preaches eloquently
to his blind brethren who never come to hear him. For he has 'found
the light.' Exeter Hall's exposition of the Jewish prophecies has
opened his eyes, and though his foes have been those of his own
household, yet, remembering the terrible text, 'He that loveth son or
daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me,' he has taken up his cross
and followed after Christ alone.

And even if the good souls for whose thousands of pounds he is the
annual interest should discover his true past--through this
tale-bearer or another--is there not but the more joy over the sinner
that repenteth?

Duties neglected, deadly sins trailing in the actual world their
unchangeable irreversible consequences--all this is irrelevant. He has
'found the light.'

And so, while Haigitcha walks in darkness, Yvonne prays in her chapel
and Elkan preaches in his church.

HOLY WEDLOCK

HOLY WEDLOCK

I

When Schneemann, the artist, returned from Rome to his native village
in Galicia, he found it humming with gossip concerning his paternal
grandmother, universally known as the _Bube_ Yenta. It would seem that
the giddy old thing hobbled home from synagogue conversing with Yossel
Mandelstein, the hunchback, and sometimes even offered the unshapely
septuagenarian her snuffbox as he passed the door of her cot