and that he had words at his command, and was brave, and was
endowed with a certain nobility of disposition which prompted him to
wish for great results rather than for small advantages. All this had
conquered her, and had made her resolve to think that a Jew could be as
good as a Christian. But now, when the trial of the man had in truth
come, she found that those around her had been right in what they had
said. How base must be the nature which could prompt a man to suspect
a girl who had been true to him as Nina had been true to her lover!

She would never see him again--never! He had left the room without even
answering the question which she had asked him. He would not even say
that he trusted her. It was manifest that he did not trust her, and
that he believed at this moment that she was endeavouring to rob him in
this matter of the deed. He had asked her if she had it in her desk or
among her clothes, and her very soul revolted from the suspicion so
implied. She would never speak to him again. It was all over. No; she
would never willingly speak to him again.

But what would she do? For a few minutes she fell back, as is so
natural with mortals in trouble, upon that religion which she had been
so willing to outrage by marrying the Jew. She went to a little drawer
and took out a string of beads which had lain there unused since she
had been made to believe that the Virgin and the saints would not
permit her marriage with Anton Trendellsohn. She took out the beads--
but she did not use them. She passed no berries through her fingers to
check the number of prayers said, for she found herself unable to say
any prayer at all. If he would come back to her, and ask her pardon--
ask it in truth at her feet--she would still forgive him, regardless
of the Virgin and the saints. And if he did not come back, what was
the fate that Lotta Luxa had predicted for her, and to which she had
acknowledged to herself that she would be driven to submit? In either
case how could she again come to terms with St John and St Nicholas?
And how was she to live? Should she lose her lover, as she now told
herself would certainly be her fate, what possibility of life was left
to her? From day to day and from week to week she had put off to a
future hour any definite consideration of what she and her father
should do in their poverty, believing that it might be postponed till
her marriage would make all things easy. Her future mode of living