They would sit for hours in the long summer nights, hand in hand, building those wonderful fabrics of childish imagination, looking forward hopefully, enthusiastically, to a future whose basis, whose essence was an eternal companionship of their two souls. There came a night—perhaps it was because the stars were brighter than usual, perhaps because the night was balmy, or perhaps because the spirit of spring was in the air—at any rate, that fatal night came when, in some unaccountable manner, their lips came together, came closely, tightly together, in a long, lingering kiss, and the next moment they found themselves flooded in a stream of light. Hastily, guiltily they looked up. The door had been opened, and the Rabbi Sarna was looking down upon them. Hannah’s father kissed her that night as usual, and she went to bed without hearing a word of reproach or of paternal advice. Whether he had gained his wisdom from the Kabbala or the Talmud I do not know, but the Rabbi Sarna was a wise man. He took a night to think the matter over. Perhaps he felt that the bringing-up of a motherless daughter was no trivial matter, and that there were times when, being a man, his instinct was sure to be wrong, and that only the most careful consideration and deliberate thought could guide him into the right path. For a whole day he said nothing. The following evening, however, when the grace after meal had been said, and “Hear, O Israel!” had been recited, he laid his hand fondly upon his daughter’s head and spoke to her, kindly. “Remember, Hannah,” he said, “the lad is not one of our people. He is a good lad, and I like him, but you are a daughter of Israel. You come of a race, Hannah, that has been persecuted for thousands of years by his people. If your mother were alive, she would forbid you ever to see him again. But I do not feel that I ought to be so harsh. I only ask you, my daughter, to remember that you are of a race that was chosen by Jehovah, and that he comes from a race that has made us suffer misery for many ages.” Hannah went to bed and cried, and rebelled at the injustice of an arrangement that seemed to her all wrong and distorted. Why were not the Jewish lads that she knew as tall and straight as her Richard? And why had they not blue eyes like his? And curly, golden hair? And that strength? And she cried herself to sleep. In some unaccountable manner—it may have been that the rabbi told the butcher and the butcher told the baker—the matter reached the ears of Richard’s guardian, who promptly took the lad to task for it.