stic sort,
without imagination, incapable of knowing true love; it seems impossible
that you can be one of them.... You, Luna! You! Don't laugh at what I
say. But I feel a strong desire to kneel down here before you, to
stretch out upon the ground and cry: '_Huerco_, what do you wish? Have
you come to carry off my Luna?... Luna is not here. She has gone
forever. This woman here is my beloved, my wife. She has no name yet,
but I'll give her one.' And to seize you in my arms, as your mother did,
to defend you against the black demon, and then to see you saved, and
mine forever; to confirm your new name with my caresses, and to call
you... my Only One, yes, my Only One. Do you like the name?... Let our
lives be lived together, with the whole world as our home."

She shook her head sadly. Very beautiful. One dream more. A few days
earlier these words would have moved her and would have made her weep.
But now!... And with cruel insistence she repeated "No, no. My God is
not your God. My race is not your race. Why should we persist in
attempting the impossible?..."

When her people had spoken indignantly about the love affair that was
being bruited all about town; when the spiritual head of her community
came to her with the ire of an ancient prophet; when accident, or
perhaps the warning of a fellow Jew, had brought about the return of her
betrothed, Isaac Nunez, Luna felt awaking within her something that had
up to that time lain dormant. The dregs of old beliefs, hatreds and
hopes were stirred in the very depths of her thought, changing her
affections and imposing new duties. She was a Jewess and would remain
faithful to her race. She would not go to lose herself in barren
isolation among strange persons who hated the Jew through inherited
instinct. Among her own kind she would enjoy the influence of the wife
that is listened to in all family councils, and when she would become
old, her children would surround her with a religious veneration. She
did not feel strong enough to suffer the hatred and suspicion of that
hostile world into which love was trying to drag her,--a world that had
presented her people only with tortures and indignities. She wished to
be loyal to her race, to continue the defensive march that her nation
was realizing across centuries of persecution.

Soon she was inspired with compassion at the dejection of her former
sweetheart, and she spoke to him more gently. She could no longer feign
calmness o