“To be sure. We should go on forever in zig-zags,” said Mrs. Meyrick. “I think it is very weak-minded to make your creed up by the rule of the contrary. Still one may honor one’s parents, without following their notions exactly, any more than the exact cut of their clothing. My father was a Scotch Calvinist and my mother was a French Calvinist; I am neither quite Scotch, nor quite French, nor two Calvinists rolled into one, yet I honor my parents’ memory.” “But I could not make myself not a Jewess,” said Mirah, insistently, “even if I changed my belief.” “No, my dear. But if Jews and Jewesses went on changing their religion, and making no difference between themselves and Christians, there would come a time when there would be no Jews to be seen,” said Mrs. Meyrick, taking that consummation very cheerfully. “Oh, please not to say that,” said Mirah, the tears gathering. “It is the first unkind thing you ever said. I will not begin that. I will never separate myself from my mother’s people. I was forced to fly from my father; but if he came back in age and weakness and want, and needed me, should I say, ‘This is not my father’? If he had shame, I must share it. It was he who was given to me for my father, and not another. And so it is with my people. I will always be a Jewess. I will love Christians when they are good, like you. But I will always cling to my people. I will always worship with them.” As Mirah had gone on speaking she had become possessed with a sorrowful passion—fervent, not violent. Holding her little hands tightly clasped and looking at Mrs. Meyrick with beseeching, she seemed to Deronda a personification of that spirit which impelled men after a long inheritance of professed Catholicism to leave wealth and high place and risk their lives in flight, that they might join their own people and say, “I am a Jew.” “Mirah, Mirah, my dear child, you mistake me!” said Mrs. Meyrick, alarmed. “God forbid I should want you to do anything against your conscience. I was only saying what might be if the world went on. But I had better have left the world alone, and not wanted to be over-wise. Forgive me, come! we will not try to take you from anybody you feel has more right to you.” “I would do anything else for you. I owe you my life,” said Mirah, not yet quite calm. “Hush, hush, now,” said Mrs. Meyrick. “I have been punished enough for wagging my tongue foolishly—making an almanac for the Millennium, as my husband used to say.” “But everything in the world must come to an end some time. We must bear to think of that,” said Mab, unable to hold her peace on this point. She had already suffered from a bondage of tongue which threatened to become severe if Mirah were to be too much indulged in this inconvenient susceptibility to innocent remarks.