ty,
and I loved my bride--for poverty to me was freedom. My heart exulted
as if it had been the heart of Moses ben Maimon, strong with the
strength of three score years, and knowing the work that was to fill
them. It was the first time I had been south; the soul within me felt
its former sun; and standing on the quay, where the ground I stood on
seemed to send forth light, and the shadows had an azure glory as of
spirits become visible, I felt myself in the flood of a glorious life,
wherein my own small year-counted existence seemed to melt, so that I
knew it not; and a great sob arose within me as at the rush of waters
that were too strong a bliss. So I stood there awaiting my companion;
and I saw him not till he said: 'Ezra, I have been to the post and
there is your letter.'"

"Ezra!" exclaimed Deronda, unable to contain himself.

"Ezra," repeated Mordecai, affirmatively, engrossed in memory. "I was
expecting a letter; for I wrote continually to my mother. And that
sound of my name was like the touch of a wand that recalled me to the
body wherefrom I had been released as it were to mingle with the ocean
of human existence, free from the pressure of individual bondage. I
opened the letter; and the name came again as a cry that would have
disturbed me in the bosom of heaven, and made me yearn to reach where
that sorrow was--'Ezra, my son!'"

Mordecai paused again, his imagination arrested by the grasp of that
long-passed moment. Deronda's mind was almost breathlessly suspended on
what was coming. A strange possibility had suddenly presented itself.
Mordecai's eyes were cast down in abstracted contemplation, and in a
few moments he went on--

"She was a mother of whom it might have come--yea, might have come to
be said, 'Her children arise up and call her blessed.' In her I
understood the meaning of that Master who, perceiving the footsteps of
his mother, rose up and said, 'The Majesty of the Eternal cometh near!'
And that letter was her cry from the depths of anguish and
desolation--the cry of a mother robbed of her little ones. I was her
eldest. Death had taken four babes one after the other. Then came,
late, my little sister, who was, more than all the rest, the desire of
my mother's eyes; and the letter was a piercing cry to me--'Ezra, my
son, I am robbed of her. He has taken her away and left disgrace
behind. They will never come again.'"--Here Mordecai lifted his eyes
suddenly, laid his hand on Deronda's arm,