al excitability which Mirah
used to witness in him when he sat at home and sobbed. As Ezra ended,
Lapidoth threw himself into a chair and cried like a woman, burying his
face against the table--and yet, strangely, while this hysterical
crying was an inevitable reaction in him under the stress of his son's
words, it was also a conscious resource in a difficulty; just as in
early life, when he was a bright-faced curly young man, he had been
used to avail himself of this subtly-poised physical susceptibility to
turn the edge of resentment or disapprobation.

Ezra sat down again and said nothing--exhausted by the shock of his own
irrepressible utterance, the outburst of feelings which for years he
had borne in solitude and silence. His thin hands trembled on the arms
of the chair; he would hardly have found voice to answer a question; he
felt as if he had taken a step toward beckoning Death. Meanwhile
Mirah's quick expectant ear detected a sound which her heart
recognized: she could not stay out of the room any longer. But on
opening the door her immediate alarm was for Ezra, and it was to his
side that she went, taking his trembling hand in hers, which he pressed
and found support in; but he did not speak or even look at her. The
father with his face buried was conscious that Mirah had entered, and
presently lifted up his head, pressed his handkerchief against his
eyes, put out his hand toward her, and said with plaintive hoarseness,
"Good-bye, Mirah; your father will not trouble you again. He deserves
to die like a dog by the roadside, and he will. If your mother had
lived, she would have forgiven me--thirty-four years ago I put the ring
on her finger under the _Chuppa_, and we were made one. She would have
forgiven me, and we should have spent our old age together. But I
haven't deserved it. Good-bye."

He rose from the chair as he said the last "good-bye." Mirah had put
her hand in his and held him. She was not tearful and grieving, but
frightened and awe-struck, as she cried out--

"No, father, no!" Then turning to her brother, "Ezra, you have not
forbidden him?--Stay, father, and leave off wrong things. Ezra, I
cannot bear it. How can I say to my father, 'Go and die!'"

"I have not said it," Ezra answered, with great effort. "I have said,
stay and be sheltered."

"Then you will stay, father--and be taken care of--and come with me,"
said Mirah, drawing him toward the door.

This was really what Lapidoth wanted.