? We shall still remain the same man and woman."

"Unhappily the world would not think so."

"Then let them hold to their bigoted opinion; it is valueless, and
having each other, we can dispense with them."

"You speak in the heat of passion; and at such a time it would be
impossible to make you understand the honeymoon of life is made up of
more than two, and a third being inimical can make it wretched. The
knowledge that people we respect hold aloof from us is bitter."

"But such knowledge," interrupted Ruth's sweet voice, "would be robbed
of all bitterness when surrounded and hedged in by all that we love."

Her father looked in surprise at the brave face raised so earnestly to
his.

"Very well," he responded; "count the world as nothing. You have just
said, my Ruth, that you would not renounce your religion. How could that
be when you have a Christian husband who would not renounce his?"

"I should hope he would not; I should have little respect for any man
who would give up his sacred convictions because I have come into his
life. As for my religion, I am a Jewess, and will die one. My God is
fixed and unalterable; he is one and indivisible; to divide his divinity
would be to deny his omnipotence. As to forms, you, Father, have bred in
me a contempt for all but a few. Saturday will always be my Sabbath, no
matter what convention would make me do. We have decided that writing
or sewing or pleasuring, since it hurts no one, is no more a sin on that
day than on another; to sit with idle hands and gossip or slander is
more so. But on that day my heart always holds its Sabbath; this is the
force of custom. Any day would do as well if we were used to it,--for
who can tell which was the first and which the seventh counting from
creation? On our New Year I should still feel that a holy cycle of time
had passed; but I live only according to one record of time, and my New
Year falls always on the 1st of January. Atonement is a sacred day to
me; I could not desecrate it. Our services are magnificently beautiful,
and I should feel like a culprit if debarred from their holiness. As to
fasting, you and I have agreed that any physical punishment that keeps
our thoughts one moment from God, and puts them on the feast that is to
come, is mere sham and pretence. After these, Father, wherein does our
religion show itself?"

"Surely," he replied with some bitterness, "we hold few Jewish rites.
Well, and so you think you can ke