He wanted to cry her name, but the word stuck in his throat. For this was not his Haigitcha; this was a new creature, cold, stern, tragic, prematurely aged, framed in the sombre shadows of the staircase. And in her eyes was neither rapture nor remembrance. 'What is it?' she asked. 'I am Elkan; don't you know me?' She stared with a little gasp, and a heaving of the flat breasts. Then she said icily: 'And what do you want?' 'I am come back,' he muttered hoarsely in Yiddish. 'And where is Gittel?' she answered in the same idiom. The needles of the whirring machines seemed piercing through his brain. So London knew that Gittel had been the companion of his flight! He hung his head. 'I was only with her one year,' he whispered. 'Then go back to thy dung-heap!' She shut the door. He thrust his foot in desperately ere it banged to. 'Haigitcha!' he shrieked. 'Let me come in. Forgive me, forgive me!' It was a tug-of-war. He forced open the door; he had a vision of surprised 'hands' stopping their machines, of a beautiful, startled girl holding the ends of a half-laid tablecloth--his Rachel, oh, his Rachel! 'Open the window, one of you!' panted Haigitcha, her shoulders still straining against the door. 'Call a policeman--the man is drunk!' He staggered back, his pressure relaxed, the door slammed. This repetition of his 'Yvonne Rupert' experience sobered him effectually. What right, indeed, had he to force himself upon this woman, upon these children, to whom he was dead? So might a suicide hope to win back his place in the old life. Life had gone on without him--had no need of him. Ah, what a punishment God had prepared for him! Closed doors to the past, closed doors everywhere. And this terrible sense of exclusion had not now the same palliative of righteous resentment. With Yvonne Rupert, the splendid-flaming, vicious ingrate, he had felt himself the sinned against. But before this wife-widow, this dutiful, hard-working, tragic creature, he had nothing but self-contempt. He tottered downstairs. How should he even get his bread--he whose ill-fame was doubtless the gossip of the Ghetto? If he could only get hold of Gideon's carving-knife! VIII But he did not commit suicide, nor did he starve. There is always one last refuge for the failures of the Ghetto, and Elkan's easy experience with the Jewish philanthropist had prepared the way for dealings with the Christian. To-day the Rev. Moses Elkan, 'the converted Jew,' preaches eloquently to his blind brethren who never come to hear him. For he has 'found the light.' Exeter Hall's exposition of the Jewish prophecies has opened his eyes, and though his foes have been those of his own household, yet, remembering the terrible text, 'He that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me,' he has taken up his cross and followed after Christ alone.