warmth might be creating
in Hans. He could come to no result, but that the position was peculiar, and
that he could make no further provision against dangers until they came nearer.
To save an unhappy Jewess from drowning herself, would not have seemed a
startling variation among police reports; but to discover in her so rare a
creature as Mirah, was an exceptional event which might well bring exceptional
consequences. Deronda would not let himself for a moment dwell on any
supposition that the consequences might enter deeply into his own life. The
image of Mirah had never yet had that penetrating radiation which would have
been given to it by the idea of her loving him. When this sort of effluence is
absent from the fancy (whether from the fact or not) a man may go far in
devotedness without perturbation.
    As to the search for Mirah's mother and brother, Deronda took what she had
said to-day as a warrant for deferring any immediate measures. His conscience
was not quite easy in this desire for delay, any more than it was quite easy in
his not attempting to learn the truth about his own mother: in both cases he
felt that there might be an unfulfilled duty to a parent, but in both cases
there was an overpowering repugnance to the possible truth, which threw a
turning weight into the scale of argument.
    »At least, I will look about,« was his final determination. »I may find some
special Jewish machinery. I will wait till after Christmas.«
    What should we all do without the calendar, when we want to put off a
disagreeable duty? The admirable arrangements of the solar system, by which our
time is measured, always supply us with a term before which it is hardly worth
while to set about anything we are disinclined to.
 

                                 Chapter XXXIII

            »No man,« says a Rabbi, by way of indisputable instance, »may turn
            the bones of his father and mother into spoons« - sure that his
            hearers felt the checks against that form of economy. The market for
            spoons has never expanded enough for any one to say, »Why not?« and
            to argue that human progress lies in such an application of
            material. The only check to be alleged is a sentiment, which will
            coerce none who do not hold that sentiments are the better part of
            the world's wealth.
 
Deronda meanwhile took to a less fashionable form of exercise than riding in
Rotten Row. He went often rambling in those parts of London which are most
inhabited by common Jews: he walked to the synagogues at times of service, he
looked