outpour. Looking on him was listening. Yes, the looking on him
sufficed. Here was an image of the beauty of a new order of godlike men,
that drained an Indian Bacchus of his thin seductions at a breath-reduced
him to the state of nursery plaything, spangles and wax, in the
contemplation of a girl suddenly plunged on the deeps of her womanhood.
She shrank to smaller and smaller as she looked.

Be sure that she knew who he was. No, says she. But she knew. It
terrified her soul to think he was Alvan. She feared scarcely less that
it might not be he. Between these dreads of doubt and belief she played
at cat and mouse with herself, escaped from cat, persecuted mouse, teased
herself, and gloated. It is he! not he! he! not he! most certainly!
impossible!--And then it ran: If he, oh me! If another, woe me! For
she had come to see Alvan. Alvan and she shared ideas. They talked
marvellously alike, so as to startle Count Kollin: and supposing he was
not Alvan, it would be a bitter disappointment. The supposition that he
was, threatened her with instant and life-long bondage.

Then again, could that face be the face of a Jew? She feasted. It was a
noble profile, an ivory skin, most lustrous eyes. Perchance a Jew of the
Spanish branch of the exodus, not the Polish. There is the noble Jew as
well as the bestial Gentile. There is not in the sublimest of Gentiles a
majesty comparable to that of the Jew elect. He may well think his race
favoured of heaven, though heaven chastise them still. The noble Jew is
grave in age, but in his youth he is the arrow to the bow of his fiery
eastern blood, and in his manhood he is--ay, what you see there! a figure
of easy and superb preponderance, whose fire has mounted to inspirit and
be tempered by the intellect.

She was therefore prepared all the while for the surprise of learning