He dropped on his knees beside her, and began praying for himself. It was not long until he was on his feet again, joyfully confessing the Christ he had been taught to despise. In the enthusiasm of this new-found happiness he went home and tried to tell his wife of the Messiah he had accepted, but she indignantly refused to listen. For months she berated and ridiculed him. When she found that not only were tears and arguments of no avail, but that he felt he must consecrate his life to the ministry, she declared she would leave him. He sold the store, and gave her all it brought; and she went back to her family in Florida. In order to prepare for the ministry he entered the university, working outside of study hours at anything he could find to do. In the meantime he had written to his parents, knowing how greatly they would be distressed, yet hoping their great love would condone the offense. His father's answer was cold and businesslike. He said that no disgrace could have come to him that could have hurt him so deeply as the infidelity of his trusted son. If he would renounce this false faith for the true faith of his fathers, he would give him forty thousand dollars outright, and also leave him a legacy of the same amount. But should he refuse the offer, he should be to him as a stranger--the doors of both his heart and his house should be forever barred against him. His mother, with a woman's tact, sent the pictures of all the family, whom he had not seen for several years. Their faces called up so many happy memories of the past that they pleaded more eloquently than words. It was a sweet, loving letter she wrote to her boy, reminding him of all they had been to each other, and begging him for her sake to come back to the old faith. But right at the last she wrote: "If you insist on clinging to this false Christ, whom we have taught you to despise, the heart of your father and of your mother must be closed against you, and you must be thrust out from us forever with our curse upon you." He knew it was the custom. He had been present once when the awful anathema was hurled at a traitor to the faith, withdrawing every right from the outlaw, living or dead. He knew that his grave would be dug in the Jewish cemetery in Baltimore; that the rabbi would read the rites of burial over his empty coffin, and that henceforth his only part in the family life would be the blot of his disgraceful memory. He spread the pictures and the letters on the desk before him. A cold perspiration broke out on his forehead, as he realized the hopelessness of the alternative offered him. One by one he took up the photographs of his brothers and sisters, looked at them long and fondly, and laid them aside; then his father's, with its strong, proud face. He put that away, too.