fall, and his head sink in melancholy: for the
moment he had lost hold of his hope. Despondency, conjured up by his
own words, had floated in and hovered above him with eclipsing wings.
He had sunk into momentary darkness,

"I feel with you--I feel strongly with you," said Deronda, in a clear
deep voice which was itself a cordial, apart from the words of
sympathy. "But forgive me if I speak hastily--for what you have
actually written there need be no utter burial. The means of
publication are within reach. If you will rely on me, I can assure you
of all that is necessary to that end."

"That is not enough," said Mordecai, quickly, looking up again with the
flash of recovered memory and confidence. "That is not all my trust in
you. You must be not only a hand to me, but a soul--believing my
belief--being moved by my reasons--hoping my hope-seeing the vision I
point to--beholding a glory where I behold it!"--Mordecai had taken a
step nearer as he spoke, and now laid his hand on Deronda's arm with a
tight grasp; his face little more than a foot off had something like a
pale flame in it--an intensity of reliance that acted as a peremptory
claim, while he went on--"You will be my life: it will be planted
afresh; it will grow. You shall take the inheritance; it has been
gathering for ages. The generations are crowding on my narrow life as a
bridge: what has been and what is to be are meeting there; and the
bridge is breaking. But I have found you. You have come in time, You
will take the inheritance which the base son refuses because of the
tombs which the plow and harrow may not pass over or the gold-seeker
disturb: you will take the sacred inheritance of the Jew."

Deronda had become as pallid as Mordecai. Quick as an alarm of flood or
fire, there spread within him not only a compassionate dread of
discouraging this fellowman who urged a prayer as one in the last
agony, but also tie opposing dread of fatally feeding an illusion, and
being hurried on to a self-committal which might turn into a falsity.
The peculiar appeal to his tenderness overcame the repulsion that most
of us experience under a grasp and speech which assumed to dominate.
The difficulty to him was to inflict the accents of hesitation and
doubt on this ardent suffering creature, who was crowding too much of
his brief being into a moment of perhaps extravagant trust. With
exquisite instinct, Deronda, before he opened his lips, placed his palm
gently on Mor