shall I leave you? Shall I say that it does not matter
whether you obey me or not? It does matter. Between you and me such
obedience matters everything. If we are to be together, I must abandon
everything for you, and you must comply in everything with me." Then
Nina, leaning close upon him, whispered into his ear that she would
obey him.

VOLUME II

CHAPTER IX

Nina's misery as she went home was almost complete. She had not,
indeed, quarrelled with her lover, who had again caressed her as she
left him, and assured her of his absolute confidence, but she had
undertaken a task against which her very soul revolted. It gave her
no comfort to say to herself that she had undertaken to look for that
which she knew she would not find, and that therefore her search could
do no harm. She had, in truth, consented to become a spy upon her
father, and was so to do in furtherance of the views of one who
suspected her father of fraud, and who had not scrupled to tell her
that her father was dishonest. Now again she thought of St Nicholas, as
she heard the dull chime of the clock from the saint's tower, and found
herself forced to acknowledge that she was doing very wickedly in
loving a Jew. Of course troubles would come upon her. What else could
she expect? Had she not endeavoured to throw behind her and to trample
under foot all that she had learned from her infancy under the guidance
of St Nicholas? Of course the saint would desert her. The very sound
of the chime told her that he was angry with her. How could she hope
again that St John would be good to her? Was it not to be expected
that the black-flowing river over which she understood him to preside
would become her enemy and would swallow her up--as Lotta Luxa had
predicted? Before she returned home, when she was quite sure that Anton
Trendellsohn had already passed over, she went down upon the bridge,
and far enough along the causeway to find herself over the river, and
there, crouching down, she looked at the rapid-running silent black
stream beneath her. The waters were very silent and very black, but
she could still see or feel that they were running rapidly. And they
were cold, too. She herself at the present moment was very cold. She
shuddered as she looked down, pressing her face against the stone-work,
with her two hands resting on two of the pillars of the parapet. It
would be very terrible. She did not think that she much cared for
death. The world