education applied to an
English lad, and one whose temperament was plain enough to eyes of ordinary
penetration. My very name! Your name, too! You it has made a Jew in soul; upon
me it weighs like a curse as often as I think of it. It symbolizes all that is
making my life a brutal failure - a failure - a failure!«
    He threw himself upon the couch and became silent, his strength at an end,
even his countenance exhausted of vitality, looking haggard and almost ignoble.
Miriam stirred at length, for the first time, and gazed steadily at him.
    »Reuben, let us have an end of this,« she said, in a voice half choked.
»Stay or go as you will; but I shall utter no more reproaches. You must make of
your life what you can. As you say, I don't understand you. Perhaps the mere
fact of my being a woman is enough to make that impossible. Only don't throw
your scorn at me for believing what you can't believe. Talk quietly; avoid those
subjects; tell me, if you wish to, what you are doing or think of doing.«
    »You should have spoken like this earlier, Miriam. It would have spared my
memory its most wretched burden.«
    »How?«
    »You know quite well that I valued your affection, and that it had no little
importance in my life. Instead of still having my sister, I had only the memory
of her anger and injustice, and of my own cursed temper.«
    »I had no influence for good.«
    »Perhaps not in the common sense of the words. I am not going to talk humbug
about a woman's power to make a man angelic; that will do for third-rate novels
and plays. But I shouldn't have thrown myself away as I have done if you had
cared to know what I was doing.«
    »Did I not care, Reuben?«
    »If so, you thought it was your duty not to show it. You thought harshness
was the only proper treatment for a case such as mine. I had had too much of
that.«
    »What did you mean just now by speaking as though you were poor?«
    »I have been poor for a long time - poor compared with what I was. Most of
my money has gone - on the fool's way. I haven't come here to lament over it.
It's one of my rules never, if