Kemp bowed his head. The dogged earnestness about his mouth and eyes
deepened; he kept his gaze steadily and attentively fixed upon Levice.
Ruth, who was the cause of the whole painful scene, seemed remote and
shadowy.

"As you say," began Levice, "we are not orthodox; but before we become
orthodox or reform, we are born, and being born, we are invested with
certain hereditary traits that are unconvertible. Every Jew bears in his
blood the glory, the triumph, the misery, the abjectness of Israel. The
farther we move in the generations, the fainter grown the inheritance. In
most countries in these times the abjectness is vanishing; we have been set
upon our feet; we have been allowed to walk; we are beginning to smile,
--that is, some of us. Those whose fathers were helped on are nearer the
man as he should be than those whose fathers are still grovelling. My
child, I think, stands a perfect type of what culture and refinement can
give. She is not an exception; there are thousands like her among our
Jewish girls. Take any intrinsically pure-souled Jew from his coarser
surroundings and give him the highest advantages, and he will stand forth
the equal, at least, of any man; but he could not mix forever with pitch
and remain undefiled."

"No man could," observed Kemp, as Levice paused. "But what are these
things to me?"

"Nothing; but to Ruth, much. That is part of the bar-sinister between you.
Possibly your sense of refinement has never been offended in my family; but
there are many families, people we visit and love, who, though possessing
all the substrata of goodness, have never been moved to cast off the
surface thorns that would prick your good taste as sharply as any physical
pain. This, of course, is not because they are Jews, but because they lack