At the Belcovitches’ the ceremonial was long, for the master of it insisted on translating the Hebrew into jargon, phrase by phrase; but no one found it tedious, especially after supper.  Pesach was there, hand in hand with Fanny, their wedding very near now; and Becky lolled royally in all her glory, aggressive of ringlet, insolently unattached, a conscious beacon of bedazzlement to the pauper Pollack we last met at Reb Shemuel’s Sabbath table, and there, too, was Chayah, she of the ill-matched legs.  Be sure that Malka had returned the clothes-brush, and was throned in complacent majesty at Milly’s table; and that Sugarman the Shadchan forgave his monocular consort her lack of a fourth uncle; while Joseph Strelitski, dreamer of dreams, rich with commissions from “Passover” cigars, brooded on the Great Exodus.  Nor could the Shalotten Shammos be other than beaming, ordering the complex ceremonial with none to contradict; nor Karlkammer be otherwise than in the seven hundred and seventy-seventh heaven, which, calculated by Gematriyah, can easily be reduced to the seventh.

Shosshi Shmendrik did not fail to explain the deliverance to the ex-widow Finkelstein, nor Guedalyah, the greengrocer, omit to hold his annual revel at the head of half a hundred merry “pauper-aliens.”  Christian roughs bawled derisively in the street, especially when doors were opened for Elijah; but hard words break no bones, and the Ghetto was uplifted above insult.

Melchitsedek Pinchas was the Passover guest at Reb Shemuel’s table, for the reek of his Sabbath cigar had not penetrated to the old man’s nostrils.  It was a great night for Pinchas; wrought up to fervid nationalistic aspirations by the memory of the Egyptian deliverance, which he yet regarded as mythical in its details.  It was a terrible night for Hannah, sitting opposite to him under the fire of his poetic regard.  She was pale and rigid, moving and speaking mechanically.  Her father glanced towards her every now and again, compassionately, but with trust that the worst was over.  Her mother realized the crisis much less keenly than he, not having been in the heart of the storm.  She had never even seen her intended son-in-law except through the lens of a camera.  She was sorry—­that was all.  Now that Hannah had broken the ice, and encouraged one young man, there was hope for the others.

Hannah’s state of mind was divined by neither parent.  Love itself is blind in those tragic silences which divide souls.

All night, after that agonizing scene, she did not sleep; the feverish activity of her mind rendered that impossible, and unerring instinct told her that David was awake also—­that they two, amid the silence of a sleeping city, wrestled in the darkness with the same terrible problem, and were never so much at one as in this their separation.  A letter came for her in the morning.  It was unstamped, and had evidently been dropped into the letter-box