“I can give you the very words. Listen.” He stood up and took off his hat, and declaimed the words with much force: “‘What mean ye that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not use this proverb any more. Behold, all souls are Mine: as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is Mine. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. But if a man be just, he shall surely live.” “These are very noble words, Constance;” indeed, Leonard spoke them with much solemnity. “The verbal interpretation of the Prophets no longer occupies our minds. Still, they are very noble words. I have never believed myself to be superstitious or to believe in heredity of misfortune; still, after learning for the first time the long string of disasters that have fallen upon my people, I became possessed with a kind of terror, as if the Hand of Fate was pressing upon us all.” “They are very noble words,” Constance repeated. “It seems as if the speaker was thinking of a distinction between consequences--certain consequences--of every man’s life as regards his children and----” “What consequences--from father to son?” “Why, you have only to look around you. We live in conditions made for us by our forefathers. My people behaved well and prospered: they saved money and bought lands: they lived, in the old phrase, God-fearing lives. Therefore I am sound in mind and body, and I am tolerably wealthy.” “Oh! that, of course. But I was not thinking of consequences like these.” “You must think of them. A man loses his fortune and position. Down go children and grandchildren. The edifice of generations may have to be built up again from the very foundations. Is it nothing to inherit a name which has been smirched? If a man commits a bad action, are not his children disgraced with him?” “Of course; but only by that act. They are not persecuted by the hand of Fate.” “Who can trace the consequences of a single act? Who can follow it up in all the lines of consequence?” “Yes; but the third and fourth generation....” “Who can say when those consequences will cease?” “‘As I live, saith the Lord.’ It is a solemn assurance--a form of words, perhaps--only a form of words--yet, if so, the audacity of it! ‘As I live’--the Lord Himself takes the oath--‘if a man be just, he shall surely live.’” “A man may be kept down by poverty and shut out from the world by his father’s shame. Yet he may still be just. It is the distinction that the Prophet would draw. What misfortune has fallen upon your House which affects the soul of a man? Death? Poverty? The wrong-doing of certain members?” Leonard shook his head. “Yes, I understand what you mean. I confess that I had been shaken by the revelations of that old lady. They seemed to explain so much.” “Perhaps they explained the whole--yet not as she meant them to explain.”