have done you
a great wrong; I admit it with anguish. I ask your forgiveness."

"Don't, Father!"

Dr. Kemp's clinched hand came down with force upon his knee. He
was white to the lips, for though Levice spoke so quietly, a strong
decisiveness rang unmistakably in every word.

"Mr. Levice, I trust I am not speaking disrespectfully," he began,
his manly voice plainly agitated, "but I must say that it was a great
oversight on your part when you threw your daughter, equipped as she
is, into Christian society,--put her right in the way of loving or being
loved by any Christian, knowing all along that such a state of affairs
could lead to nothing. It was not only wrong, but, holding such views,
it was cruel."

"I acknowledge my culpability; my only excuse lies in the fact that such
an event never presented itself as a possibility to my imagination. If
it had, I should probably have trusted that her own Jewish conscience
and bringing-up would protest against her allowing herself to think
seriously upon such an issue."

"But, sir, I do not understand your exception; you are not orthodox."

"No; but I am intensely Jewish," answered the old man, proudly regarding
his antagonist. "I tell you I object to this marriage; that is not
saying I oppose it. There are certain things connected with it of
which neither you nor my daughter have probably thought. To me they
are all-powerful obstacles to your happiness. Being an old man and more
experienced, will you permit me to suggest these points? My friend, I
am seeking nothing but my child's happiness; if, by opening the eyes
of both of you to what menaces her future welfare, I can avert what
promises but a sometime misery, I must do it, late though it may be. If,
when I have stated my view, you can convince me that I am wrong, I shall
be persuaded and admit it. Will you accept my plan?"

Kemp bowed his head. The dogged earnestness about his mouth and eyes
deepened; he kept his gaze steadily and attentively fixed upon Levice.
Ruth, who was the cause of the whole painful scene, seemed remote and
shadowy.

"As you say," began Levice, "we are not orthodox; but before we become
orthodox or reform, we are born, and being born, we are invested with
certain hereditary traits that are unconvertible. Every Jew bears in his
blood the glory, the triumph, the misery, the abjectness of Israel. The
farther we move in the generations, the fainter grown the inheritance.
In most countries in th