by David’s hand.  It appointed an interview at ten o’clock at a corner of the Ruins; of course, he could not come to the house.  Hannah was out:  with a little basket to make some purchases.  There was a cheery hum of life about the Ghetto; a pleasant festival bustle; the air resounded with the raucous clucking of innumerable fowls on their way to the feather-littered, blood-stained shambles, where professional cut-throats wielded sacred knives; boys armed with little braziers of glowing coal ran about the Ruins, offering halfpenny pyres for the immolation of the last crumbs of leaven.  Nobody paid the slightest attention to the two tragic figures whose lives turned on the brief moments of conversation snatched in the thick of the hurrying crowd.

David’s clouded face lightened a little as he saw Hannah advancing towards him.

“I knew you would come,” he said, taking her hand for a moment.  His palm burned, hers was cold and limp.  The stress of a great tempest of emotion had driven the blood from her face and limbs, but inwardly she was on fire.  As they looked each read revolt in the other’s eyes.

“Let us walk on,” he said.

They moved slowly forwards.  The ground was slippery and muddy under foot.  The sky was gray.  But the gayety of the crowds neutralized the dull squalor of the scene.

“Well?” he said, in a low tone.

“I thought you had something to propose,” she murmured.

“Let me carry your basket.”

“No, no; go on.  What have you determined?”

“Not to give you up, Hannah, while I live.”

“Ah!” she said quietly.  “I have thought it all over, too, and I shall not leave you.  But our marriage by Jewish law is impossible; we could not marry at any synagogue without my father’s knowledge; and he would at once inform the authorities of the bar to our union.”

“I know, dear.  But let us go to America, where no one will know.  There we shall find plenty of Rabbis to marry us.  There is nothing to tie me to this country.  I can start my business in America just as well as here.  Your parents, too, will think more kindly of you when you are across the seas.  Forgiveness is easier at a distance.  What do you say, dear?”

She shook her head.

“Why should we be married in a synagogue?” she asked.

“Why?” repeated he, puzzled.

“Yes, why?”

“Because we are Jews.”

“You would use Jewish forms to outwit Jewish laws?” she asked quietly.

“No, no.  Why should you put it that way?  I don’t doubt the Bible is all right in making the laws it does.  After the first heat of my anger was over, I saw the whole thing in its proper bearings.  Those laws about priests were only intended for the days when we had a Temple, and in any case they cannot apply to a merely farcical divorce like yours.  It is these old fools,—­I beg your pardon,—­it is these fanatical Rabbis who insist on giving them a rigidity God never meant them to have, just as they still make a fuss about kosher meat.  In America they are less strict; besides, they will not know I am a Cohen.”