But immediately the strange Jew rose from his sitting posture, and Deronda felt a thin hand pressing his arm tightly, while a hoarse, excited voice, not much above a loud whisper, said, “You are perhaps of our race?” Deronda colored deeply, not liking the grasp, and then answered with a slight shake of the head, “No.” The grasp was relaxed, the hand withdrawn, the eagerness of the face collapsed into uninterested melancholy, as if some possessing spirit which had leaped into the eyes and gestures had sunk back again to the inmost recesses of the frame; and moving further off as he held out the little book, the stranger said in a tone of distant civility, “I believe Mr. Ram will be satisfied with half-a-crown, sir.” The effect of this change on Deronda—he afterward smiled when he recalled it—was oddly embarrassing and humiliating, as if some high dignitary had found him deficient and given him his _congé_. There was nothing further to be said, however: he paid his half-crown and carried off his _Salomon Maimon’s Lebensgeschichte_ with a mere “good-morning.” He felt some vexation at the sudden arrest of the interview, and the apparent prohibition that he should know more of this man, who was certainly something out of the common way—as different probably as a Jew could well be from Ezra Cohen, through whose door Deronda was presently entering, and whose flourishing face glistening on the way to fatness was hanging over the counter in negotiation with some one on the other side of the partition, concerning two plated stoppers and three teaspoons, which lay spread before him. Seeing Deronda enter, he called out “Mother! Mother!” and then with a familiar nod and smile, said, “Coming, sir—coming directly.”