as he had faithfully vowed to do.  But even this terrible thought was swallowed up in the fear that some accident had happened to him.  He haunted the house for an hour, filling up the intervals of fruitless inquiry with little random walks round the neighborhood, determined not to return home to his wife without news of their child.  The restless life of the great twinkling streets was almost a novelty to him; it was rarely his perambulations in London extended outside the Ghetto, and the radius of his life was proportionately narrow,—­with the intensity that narrowness forces on a big soul.  The streets dazzled him, he looked blinkingly hither and thither in the despairing hope of finding his boy.  His lips moved in silent prayer; he raised his eyes beseechingly to the cold glittering heavens.  Then, all at once—­as the clocks pointed to midnight—­he found him.  Found him coming out of an unclean place, where he had violated the Passover.  Found him—­fit climax of horror—­with the “strange woman” of The Proverbs, for whom the faithful Jew has a hereditary hatred.

His son—­his.  Reb Shemuel’s!  He, the servant of the Most High, the teacher of the Faith to reverential thousands, had brought a son into the world to profane the Name!  Verily his gray hairs would go down with sorrow to a speedy grave!  And the sin was half his own; he had weakly abandoned his boy in the midst of a great city.  For one awful instant, that seemed an eternity, the old man and the young faced each other across the chasm which divided their lives.  To the son the shock was scarcely less violent than to the father.  The Seder, which the day’s unwonted excitement had clean swept out of his mind, recurred to him in a flash, and by the light of it he understood the puzzle of his father’s appearance.  The thought of explaining rushed up only to be dismissed.  The door of the restaurant had not yet ceased swinging behind him—­there was too much to explain.  He felt that all was over between him and his father.  It was unpleasant, terrible even, for it meant the annihilation of his resources.  But though he still had an almost physical fear of the old man, far more terrible even than the presence of his father was the presence of Miss Gladys Wynne.  To explain, to brazen it out, either course was equally impossible.  He was not a brave man, but at that moment he felt death were preferable to allowing her to be the witness of such a scene as must ensue.  His resolution was taken within a few brief seconds of the tragic rencontre.  With wonderful self-possession, he nodded to the cabman who had put the question, and whose vehicle was drawn up opposite the restaurant.  Hastily he helped the unconscious Gladys into the hansom.  He was putting his foot on the step himself when Reb Shemuel’s paralysis relaxed suddenly.  Outraged by this final pollution of the Festival, he ran forward and laid his hand on Levi’s shoulder.  His face was ashen, his heart thumped painfully; the hand on Levi’s cloak shook as with palsy.