"You speak in the heat of passion; and at such a time it would be
impossible to make you understand the honeymoon of life is made up of more
than two, and a third being inimical can make it wretched. The knowledge
that people we respect hold aloof from us is bitter."

"But such knowledge," interrupted Ruth's sweet voice, "would be robbed of
all bitterness when surrounded and hedged in by all that we love."

Her father looked in surprise at the brave face raised so earnestly to his.

"Very well," he responded; "count the world as nothing. You have just
said, my Ruth, that you would not renounce your religion. How could that
be when you have a Christian husband who would not renounce his?"

"I should hope he would not; I should have little respect for any man who
would give up his sacred convictions because I have come into his life. As
for my religion, I am a Jewess, and will die one. My God is fixed and
unalterable; he is one and indivisible; to divide his divinity would be to
deny his omnipotence. As to forms, you, Father, have bred in me a contempt
for all but a few. Saturday will always be my Sabbath, no matter what
convention would make me do. We have decided that writing or sewing or
pleasuring, since it hurts no one, is no more a sin on that day than on
another; to sit with idle hands and gossip or slander is more so. But on
that day my heart always holds its Sabbath; this is the force of custom.
Any day would do as well if we were used to it, --for who can tell which
was the first and which the seventh counting from creation? On our New
Year I should still feel that a holy cycle of time had passed; but I live
only according to one record of time, and my New Year falls always on the
1st of January. Atonement is a sacred day to me; I could not desecrate it.