the world--not renounce our higher gift and say, 'Let us be as if we
were not among the populations;' but choose our full heritage, claim
the brotherhood of our nation, and carry into it a new brotherhood with
the nations of the Gentiles. The vision is there; it will be fulfilled."

With the last sentence, which was no more than a loud whisper, Mordecai
let his chin sink on his breast and his eyelids fall. No one spoke. It
was not the first time that he had insisted on the same ideas, but he
was seen to-night in a new phase. The quiet tenacity of his ordinary
self differed as much from his present exaltation of mood as a man in
private talk, giving reasons for a revolution of which no sign is
discernable, differs from one who feels himself an agent in a
revolution begun. The dawn of fulfillment brought to his hope by
Deronda's presence had wrought Mordecai's conception into a state of
impassioned conviction, and he had found strength in his excitement to
pour forth the unlocked floods of emotive argument, with a sense of
haste as at a crisis which must be seized. But now there had come with
the quiescence of fatigue a sort of thankful wonder that he had
spoken--a contemplation of his life as a journey which had come at last
to this bourne. After a great excitement, the ebbing strength of
impulse is apt to leave us in this aloofness from our active self. And
in the moments after Mordecai had sunk his head, his mind was wandering
along the paths of his youth, and all the hopes which had ended in
bringing him hither.

Every one felt that the talk was ended, and the tone of phlegmatic
discussion made unseasonable by Mordecai's high-pitched solemnity. It
was as if they had come together to hear the blowing of the _shophar_,
and had nothing to do now but to disperse. The movement was unusually
general, and in less than ten minutes the room was empty of all except
Mordecai and Deronda. "Good-nights" had been given to Mordecai, but it
was evident he had not heard them, for he remained rapt and motionless.
Deronda would not disturb this needful rest, but waited for a
spontaneous movement.

CHAPTER XLIII.

"My spirit is too weak; mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky."
--KEATS.

After a few minutes the unwonted stillness had penetrated Mordec