of the festival in which we must offer the first fruits of
our joy, and mingle no mourning with them."

Deronda divined the hinted grief, and left it in silence, rising as he
saw Mirah rise, and saying to her, "Are you going? I must leave almost
immediately--when I and Mrs. Adam have mounted the precious chest, and
I have delivered the key to Mordecai--no, Ezra,--may I call him Ezra
now? I have learned to think of him as Ezra since I have heard you call
him so."

"Please call him Ezra," said Mirah, faintly, feeling a new timidity
under Deronda's glance and near presence. Was there really something
different about him, or was the difference only in her feeling? The
strangely various emotions of the last few hours had exhausted her; she
was faint with fatigue and want of food. Deronda, observing her pallor
and tremulousness, longed to show more feeling, but dared not. She put
out her hand with an effort to smile, and then he opened the door for
her. That was all.

A man of refined pride shrinks from making a lover's approaches to a
woman whose wealth or rank might make them appear presumptuous or
low-motived; but Deronda was finding a more delicate difficulty in a
position which, superficially taken, was the reverse of that--though to
an ardent reverential love, the loved woman has always a kind of wealth
and rank which makes a man keenly susceptible about the aspect of his
addresses. Deronda's difficulty was what any generous man might have
felt in some degree; but it affected him peculiarly through his
imaginative sympathy with a mind in which gratitude was strong. Mirah,
he knew, felt herself bound to him by deep obligations, which to her
sensibilities might give every wish of his the aspect of a claim; and
an inability to fulfill it would cause her a pain continually revived
by their inevitable communion in care of Ezra. Here were fears not of
pride only, but of extreme tenderness. Altogether, to have the
character of a benefactor seemed to Deronda's anxiety an insurmountable
obstacle to confessing himself a lover, unless in some inconceivable
way it could be revealed to him that Mirah's heart had accepted him
beforehand. And the agitation on his own account, too, was not small.

Even a man who has practised himself in love-making till his own
glibness has rendered him sceptical, may at last be overtaken by the
lover's awe--may tremble, stammer, and show other signs of recovered
sensibility no more in the range of