The implication that he had only himself to blame threw him into a new frenzy. But he restrained himself, and said with ghastly deliberation:-- "Flora, you are not going to marry him." "I _am_. I can't live without him," she declared with quiet emphasis. Asriel left her room. * * * * * "It's all gone, Tamara! My candle is blown out," he said, making his way from the dining-room to the kitchen. "There is no Shaya any longer." "A weeping, a darkness to me! Has an accident--mercy and peace!--befallen the child?" "Yes, he is 'dead and buried, and gone from the market-place.' Worse than that: a convert Jew is worse than a dead one. It's all gone, Tamara!" he repeated gravely. "I have just seen him eating treife in a Gentile restaurant. America has robbed me of my glory." "Woe is me!" the housekeeper gasped, clutching at her wig. "Treife! Does he not get enough to eat here?" She then burst out, "Don't I serve him the best food there is in the world? Any king would be glad to get such dinners." "Well, it seems treife tastes better," Asriel rejoined bitterly. "A calamity upon my sinful head! We must have evil-eyed the child; we have devoured him with our admiring looks." While Asriel was answering her volley of questions, Flora stealthily left the house. When Stroon missed her he hurried off to Clinton Street. There he learned of the landlady that her lodger had left a short while before, in the company of his friend and a young lady whom the two young men had found waiting in her parlor. In his despair Asriel betook himself to the Astor Library, to some of Flora's friends, and even to the Bowery restaurant. When he reached home, exhausted with fatigue and rage, he found his daughter in her room. "Where have you been?" he demanded, sternly. "I'll tell you where, but don't aggravate yourself, papaly," she replied in beseeching, tearful accents. "Where have you been?" "I am going to tell you, but don't blame Shaya. He is awful fond of you. It's all my fault. He didn't want to go, but I couldn't help it, papaly. We've been to the city court and got married by a judge. Shaya didn't want to." "You married!" "Yes, but don't be angry, papaly darlin'. We'll do everything to please you. If you don't want him to be a doctor, he won't." "A doctor!" he resumed, still speaking like one in a daze. "Is that what you have been up to? I see--you have got the best of me, after all. You married, Flora?" he repeated, unable to apply the meaning of the word to his daughter. "In court--without Canopy and Dedication--like Gentiles? What have you done, Flora?" He sank into a chair, gnashing his teeth and tearing at his sidelocks. "Papaly, papaly, don't!" she sobbed, hugging and kissing him. "You know I ain't to blame for it all."