“I mean it,” she said gravely and quietly.  “Do you think I could face my father and mother, knowing I was about to wound them to the heart?  Each day of delay would be torture to me.  Oh, why is religion such a curse?” She paused, overwhelmed for a moment by the emotion she had been suppressing.  She resumed in the same quiet manner.  “Yes, we must break away at once.  We have kept our last Passover.  We shall have to eat leavened food—­it will be a decisive break.  Take me to Liverpool, David, this very day.  You are my chosen husband; I trust in you.”

She looked at him frankly with her dark eyes that stood out in lustrous relief against the pale skin.  He gazed into those eyes, and a flash as from the inner heaven of purity pierced his soul.

“Thank you, dearest,” he said in a voice with tears in it.

They walked on silently.  Speech was as superfluous as it was inadequate.  When they spoke again their voices were calm.  The peace that comes of resolute decision was theirs at last, and each was full of the joy of daring greatly for the sake of their mutual love.  Petty as their departure from convention might seem to the stranger, to them it loomed as a violent breach with all the traditions of the Ghetto and their past lives; they were venturing forth into untrodden paths, holding each other’s hand.

Jostling the loquacious crowd, in the unsavory by-ways of the Ghetto, in the gray chillness of a cloudy morning, Hannah seemed to herself to walk in enchanted gardens, breathing the scent of love’s own roses mingled with the keen salt air that blew in from the sea of liberty.  A fresh, new blessed life was opening before her.  The clogging vapors of the past were rolling away at last.  The unreasoning instinctive rebellion, bred of ennui and brooding dissatisfaction with the conditions of her existence and the people about her, had by a curious series of accidents been hastened to its acutest development; thought had at last fermented into active resolution, and the anticipation of action flooded her soul with peace and joy, in which all recollection of outside humanity was submerged.

“What time can you be ready by?” he said before they parted.

“Any time,” she answered.  “I can take nothing with me.  I dare not pack anything.  I suppose I can get necessaries in Liverpool.  I have merely my hat and cloak to put on.”

“But that will be enough,” he said ardently.  “I want but you.”

“I know it, dear,” she answered gently.  “If you were as other Jewish young men I could not give up all else for you.”

“You shall never regret it, Hannah,” he said, moved to his depths, as the full extent of her sacrifice for love dawned upon him.  He was a vagabond on the face of the earth, but she was tearing herself away from deep roots in the soil of home, as well as from the conventions of her circle and her sex.  Once again he trembled with a sense of unworthiness, a sudden anxious doubt if he were noble