But all at once his superstition sprang upon him. All at once, like a flash of lightning in the darkness, the fear of the Divine wrath lit up his imagination. Every drop of blood in his body came to a standstill and grew cold. He could feel his flesh creep, his hair rise on end. For a third time he pronounced her name; but this time it escaped like a gasp of pain from between clenched teeth. Why had he ever seen her? Why had he not understood the peril that he was running, and avoided it? Henceforth, at any rate, he would never see her again. He would do as his uncle had said, give her up, tear her from his heart. No matter how hard it might be, he would do it, and so save her and himself from perdition. But the resolution had not taken shape in his mind before Christine's face, pale and pleading, with pathetic, passionate eyes, came up visibly before him; and then he was conscious of nothing but of a great tenderness for her, an infinite need of her, a sharp pang of remorse that he should have been disloyal to her for an instant, a strong throbbing in his temples, a wondrous tremor through all his senses. Yet, even while this vision was still haunting his sight, the voice of the rabbi began to ring hideously in his ears, repeating the anathema that his own ancestor had written; and all the Jew in him shuddered at the sound. He covered his head and prayed. He remained in prayer until the dawn had begun to whiten the walls of his room. Then he sat down at his window, and watched the red and gold burn in the eastern sky, and wondered at the strange calm that had come to him. His prayer had been answered, he believed. He had prayed that his heart might be purged of the unholy love that had stolen into it. Now he could think of Christine with complete indifference. Not a trace was left of the agitation which that thought had aroused in him a little while ago. “The Lord has heard my prayer. I am not in love with her any more,” he said. He went through the rest of that week in the same indifferent condition--ate, drank, slept, painted, chatted with his uncle, kept the Sabbath, precisely as though Christine Redwood had never crossed the horizon of his world. “I am not in love with her,” he assured himself. “She is a pretty and pleasant girl; but I am not in love with her, and never shall be.” The Jew had got the better of the man. VII.