rewell blessing:

'The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon
you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of His
countenance upon you and give you peace.'

How often she had heard it in Hebrew from the priests as they blessed
the other tribes! Her husband himself had chanted it, with uplifted
palms and curiously grouped fingers. But never before had she felt its
beauty: she had never even understood its words till she read the
English of them in the gilt-edged Prayer-Book that marked rising
wealth. Surely there had been some monstrous mistake in conceiving the
two creeds as at daggers drawn, and though she only pretended to kneel
with the others, she felt her knees sinking in surrender to the larger
life around her.

As the volunteers filed out and the cheers came in, she wormed her way
nearer to the aisle, scrambling even over backs of chairs in the
general mellay. This time Simon saw her. He stretched out his martial
arm and blew her a kiss. Oh, delicious tears, full of heartbreak and
exaltation! This was their farewell.

She passed out into the roaring crowd, with a fantastic dream-sense of
a night-sky and a great stone building, dark with age and solemnity,
and unreal figures perched on railings and points of vantage, and
hurrahing hordes that fused themselves with the procession and became
part of its marching. She yearned forwards to vague glories, aware of
a poor past. She ran with the crowd. How they cheered her boy! _Her_
boy! She saw him carried off on the shoulders of Christian citizens.
Yes; he was a hero. She was the mother of a hero.

IX

The first news she got from him was posted at St. Vincent. He wrote to
her alone, with a jocose hope that his father would be satisfied with
his sufferings on the voyage. Not only had the sea been rough, but he
had suffered diabolically from the inoculation against enteric fever,
which, even after he had got his sea-legs, kept him to his berth and
gave him a 'Day of Atonement' thirst.

'Ah!' growled S. Cohn; 'he sees what a fool he's been, and he'll take
the next boat back.'

'But that would be desertion.'

'Well, he didn't mind deserting the business.'

Mr. Cohn's bewilderment increased with every letter. The boy was
sleeping in sodden trenches, sometimes without blankets; and instead of
grumbling at that, his one grievance was that the regiment was not
getting to the front. Heat and frost, hurricane and dust-storm--