f a disciple, and he
saw me by their light; I corresponded well enough with the image his
longing had created. He took me for one of his race. Suppose that his
impression--the elderly Jew at Frankfort seemed to have something like
it--suppose in spite of all presumptions to the contrary, that his
impression should somehow be proved true, and that I should come
actually to share any of the ideas he is devoted to? This is the only
question which really concerns the effect of our meeting on my life.

"But if the issue should be quite different?--well, there will be
something painful to go through. I shall almost inevitably have to be
an active cause of that poor fellow's crushing disappointment. Perhaps
this issue is the one I had need prepare myself for. I fear that no
tenderness of mine can make his suffering lighter. Would the
alternative--that I should not disappoint him--be less painful to me?"

Here Deronda wavered. Feelings had lately been at work within him which
had very much modified the reluctance he would formerly have had to
think of himself as probably a Jew. And, if you like, he was romantic.
That young energy and spirit of adventure which have helped to create
the world-wide legions of youthful heroes going to seek the hidden
tokens of their birth and its inheritance of tasks, gave him a certain
quivering interest in the bare possibility that he was entering on a
track like--all the more because the track was one of thought as well
as action.

"The bare possibility." He could not admit it to be more. The belief
that his father was an Englishman only grew firmer under the weak
assaults of unwarranted doubt. And that a moment should ever come in
which that belief was declared a delusion, was something of which
Deronda would not say, "I should be glad." His life-long affection for
Sir Hugo, stronger than all his resentment, made him shrink from
admitting that wish.

Which way soever the truth might lie, he repeated to himself what he
had said to Mordecai--that he could not without farther reasons
undertake to hasten its discovery. Nay, he was tempted now to regard
his uncertainty as a condition to be cherished for the present. If
further intercourse revealed nothing but illusions as what he was
expected to share in, the want of any valid evidence that he was a Jew
might save Mordecai the worst shock in the refusal of fraternity. It
might even be justifiable to use the uncertainty on this point in
keeping