So this was the meaning of your silence; this the tragedy that lay behind your simple sentence, "I have now conquered all the difficulties which beset me at the first." This was the motive that guided your hand to write those bitter lines about our race, so that you might henceforth cut yourself off from the possibility of allying yourself with it even in thought. I understand all now, my poor high-mettled boy. How you must have suffered! How your pride must have rebelled at the idea that you might have to make such a confession to me--little knowing I should have hailed it with delight. That temptation should have assailed you, too, at such a period--when you were publishing your great work on the ideals of Holy Russia! Mysterious, indeed, are the ways of Providence. And yet why may not all be well after all, and Heaven grant me such grace as I would willingly sacrifice my life to deserve? It is impossible that my son's passion can be utterly dead. Such fires are only covered up. I will go to him and tell him all. The news that he is a Jew will revolutionize him. His love will flame up afresh and take on the guise and glamour of duty. Love, posing as logic, will whisper in his ear that no bars of early training can avail to keep him from the race to which he belongs by blood and by his father's faith. In this girl's eyes he will read God's message of command, and I, God's message of Peace and Reconciliation. The tears are in my eyes; I can hardly see to write. The happiness I foresee is too great. Blessings on your sweet face, Rachel Jacobvina, my own darling daughter that is to be. To you is allotted the blessed task of solving a fearful problem, of rescuing and reuniting two human lives. Yes, Heaven is indeed merciful. To-morrow I start for Moscow. _Thursday._--How can I write it? No, there is no pity in Heaven. The sky smiles in steely blankness. The air cuts like a knife. Paul is well, or as well as a convalescent can be. He must have had a heart of ice. But it is fortunate he had, seeing what the icy fates have wrought. I arrived at Moscow, and hurried in a _droshky_ across the well-known bridge to Paul's lodgings. A ghastly procession stopped me. Some _burlaks_ were bearing the corpse of a young girl who had thrown herself into the ice-laden river. A clammy foreboding gathered at my heart, but ere I had time to say a word, an old, caftan-clad man, with agonized eyes and a white, streaming beard, dashed up, pulled off the face-cloth, revealing a strange, weird loveliness, uttered a scream which yet rings in my ears, threw himself passionately on the body, rose up again, murmured something solemnly and resignedly in Hebrew, rent his garments, readjusted the face-cloth, and followed weeping in the rear. And from lip to lip, that for once forgot to curl in scorn, flew the murmur: "Rachel Jacobvina."