"I am glad you confess it," said Fanny, witheringly. "It shows you have still one redeeming trait. And I am glad you spoke ill of my poor father, for it has led to the revelation of your true character before it was too late. You will, of course, understand, Mr. Mendoza, that our acquaintance is at an end." "Fanny!" I cried, frantically. "Spare me a scene, I beg of you," she said, coldly. "You, you the man who pretended to such ardent piety, to such enthusiasm for our holy religion, are an apostate from the faith into which you were born, a blasphemer, an atheist." I stared at her in dumb horror. I had entangled myself inextricably. How could I now explain that it was her father who was the renegade, not I? "Good-bye," said Fanny. "Heaven make you a better Jew." I moved desperately towards her, but she waved me back. "Don't touch me," she cried. "Go, go!" "But is there no hope for me?" I exclaimed, looking wildly into the cold, statue-like face, that seemed more beautiful than ever, now it was fading from my vision. "None," she said. Then, in a breaking voice, she murmured, "Neither for you nor for me." "Ah, you love me still," I cried, striving to embrace her. "You will be my wife." She struggled away from me. "No, no," she said, with a gesture of horror. "It would be sacrilege to my dead father's memory. Rather would I marry a Christian, yes, even a Catholic, than an apostate Jew like you. Leave me, I pray you; or, must I ring the bell?" I went--a sadder and a wiser man. But even my wisdom availed me not, for when I repaired to the restaurant to impart it to the proprietor, the last consolation was denied me. He had sold his business and returned to Italy. To-morrow I start for Turkestan. CHAPTER XII. THE ARITHMETIC AND PHYSIOLOGY OF LOVE. "Well, have you seen this Fanny Radowski?" said Lord Silverdale, when he returned the manuscript to the President of the Old Maids' Club. "Of course. Didn't I tell you I had the story from her own mouth, though I have put it into Mendoza's?" "Ah, yes, I remember now. It certainly is funny, her refusing a good Catholic on the ground that he was a bad Jew. But then according to the story she doesn't know he's a Catholic?" "No, it was I who divined the joke of the situation. Lookers-on always see more of the game. I saw at once that if Mendoza were really a Jew, he would never have been such an ass as to make the slip he did; and so from this and several other things she told me about her lover, I constructed deductively the history you have read. She says she first met him at a mourning service in memory of her father, and that it is a custom among her people when they have not enough men to form a religious quorum (the number is the mystical ten) to invite any brother Jew who may be passing to step in, whether he is an acquaintance or not."