When I reached my room I found, to my dismay, that the pile of vests which I had left on my bed on going out the day before had been removed; and just as I was telling myself that no one else except Mrs.

Abramovitch had a key to my door I heard shuffling footsteps on the stair, and knew that her husband was coming up to me.

A moment afterwards the Jew stood in my doorway. He was dressed in his Sabbath suit and, free from the incongruous indications of his homely calling, the patriarchal appearance which had first struck me was even more marked than before. His face was pale, his expression was severe, and if his tongue betrayed the broken English of the Polish Jew, I, in my confusion and fear, did not notice it then.

My first thought was that he had come to reprove me for neglecting my work, and I was prepared to promise to make up for my absence. But at a second glance I saw that something had happened, something had become known, and that he was there to condemn and denounce me.

"You have been out all night," he said. "Can you tell me where you have been?"

I knew I could not, and though it flashed upon me to say that I had slept at the house of a friend, I saw that, if he asked who my friend was, and what, I should be speechless.

The Jew waited for my reply and then said:

"You have given us a name--can you say it is your true and right one?"

Again I made no answer, and after another moment the Jew said:

"Can you deny that you have a child whom you have hidden from our knowledge?"

I felt myself gasping, but still I did not speak.

"Can you say that it was lawfully born according to your Christian marriage?"

I felt the colour flushing into my face but I was still silent; and after a moment in which, as I could see, the stern-natured Jew was summing me up as a woman of double life and evil character, he said:

"Then it is true? ... Very well, you will understand that from this day you cease to be in my service."

All this time my eyes were down, but I was aware that somebody else had come into the room. It was Miriam, and she was trying to plead for me.

"Father ..." she began, but, turning hotly upon her, the Jew cried passionately:

"Go away! A true daughter of Israel should know better than to speak for such a woman."

I heard the girl going slowly down the stairs, and then the Jew, stepping up to me and speaking more loudly than before, said:

"Woman, leave my house at once, before you corrupt the conscience of my child."

Again I became aware that some one had come into the room. It was Mrs.

Abramovitch, and she, too, was pleading for me.

"Israel! Calm thyself! Do not give way to injustice and anger. On Shobbos morning, too!"

"Hannah," said the Jew, "thou speakest with thy mouth, not thy heart.

The Christian doth not deny that she hath given thee a false name, and is the adulterous mother of a misbegotten child. If she were a Jewish woman she would be summoned before the Beth Din, and in better days our law of Moses would have stoned her. Shall she, because she is a Christian, dishonour a good Jewish house? No! The hand of the Lord would go out against me."

"But she is homeless, and she hath been a good servant to thee, Israel.

Give her time to find another shelter."

There was a moment of silence after that, and then the Jew said:

"Very well! It shall not be said that Israel Abramovitch knows not to temper justice with mercy."

And then, my face being still down, I heard him saying over my head:

"You may stay here another week. After that I wash my hands of thee."

With these hard words he turned away, and I heard him going heavily down the stairs. His wife stayed a little longer, saying something in a kind voice, which I did not comprehend, and then she followed him.

I do not think I had spoken a word. I continued to stand where the Jew had left me. After a while I heard him closing and locking the door of his own apartment, and knew that he was going off to his synagogue in Brick Lane in his tall silk hat worn on the back of his head like a skull-cap, and with his wife and daughter behind him, carrying his leather-bound prayer-book.

I hardly knew what else was happening. My heart was heaving like a dead body on a billow. All that the priest had said was gone. In its place there was a paralysing despair as if the wheels of life were rolling over me.

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

My dear, long-suffering, martyred darling!

It makes my blood boil to see how the very powers of darkness, in the name of religion, morality, philanthropy and the judgment of God, were persecuting my poor little woman.

But why speak of myself at all, or interrupt my darling's narrative, except to say what was happening in my efforts to reach her?

While we were swinging along in our big liner over the heaving bosom of the Mediterranean the indefinable sense of her danger never left me day or night.

That old dream of the glacier and the precipice continued to haunt my sleep, with the difference that, instead of the aurora glistening in my dear one's eyes, there was now a blizzard behind her.

The miserable thing so tortured me as we approached Malta (where I expected to receive a reply to the cable I had sent from Port Said to the house of Daniel O'Neill) that I felt physically weak at the thought of the joy or sorrow ahead of me.

Though there was no telegram from my darling at Malta, there was one from the chairman of my committee, saying he was coming to Marseilles to meet our steamer and would sail the rest of the way home with us.

Indirectly this brought me a certain comfort. It reminded me of the letter I had written for my dear one on the day I left Castle Raa.

Sixteen months had passed since then, serious things had happened in the interval, and I had never thought of that letter before.

It was not to her father, as she supposed, and certainly not to her husband. It was to my chairman, asking him, in the event of my darling sending it on, to do whatever was necessary to protect her during my absence.

If my chairman had not received that letter, my conclusion would be that my dear little woman had never been reduced to such straits as to require help from any one. If he had in fact received it, he must have done what I wished, and therefore everything would be well.

There was a certain suspense as well as a certain consolation in all this, and before our big ship slowed down at Marseilles I was on deck searching for my chairman among the people waiting for us on the pier.

I saw him immediately, waving his travelling cap with a flourish of joy, and I snatched a little comfort from that.

As soon as the steamer was brought to, he was the first to come aboard, and I scanned his face as he hurried up the gangway. It was beaming.

"It's all right," I thought; "a man could not look as happy as that if he were bringing me bad news."

A moment afterwards he was shaking my hand, clapping me on the shoulder, and saying:

"Splendid! Magnificent! Glorious achievement! Proved your point up to the hilt, my boy!"

And when I said something about not having gone all the way he cried: