Lay dead but I and thou,
Could we be so now!”
But waking up, late next forenoon, he came to his senses--realized
what he had done, and reflected upon it. He hardly dared to credit his
memory. He hardly dared to believe that what he remembered was the very
truth, and not an hallucination born of his desire. And yet--No; dreams
were not made of such circumstantial stuff.
“I love her, I love her,” he cried exultantly. “_And she loves me!_”
What had become of his Judaism? his race-pride? his superstition? Love,
apparently, had swept them clean away. Not a vestige of them remained.
At a touch, it seemed, love had converted Elias Bacharach from the most
reactionary sort of orthodoxy, to a rationalism, the bare contemplation
of which, a few days ago, would have appalled him.
“Surely,” he argued, “the Law of God as the hands of men have written
it in books, is not to be weighed against the Law of God as the hand of
Nature has written it in my own heart.”
He could not realize that he had ever thought otherwise. He could not
realize that he had ever shrunk in terror from the idea of marrying
Christine Redwood. He could not realize that he had ever professed a
creed by which such a marriage would have been accounted sin. When he
recollected how, less than a week ago, that same creed had kept him
awake, praying, all night long--when he recollected how, for six days,
he had told himself that he did not love her, and never would--he was
nonplused; he could not admit it; it was like the recollection of a bad,
fantastic dream.
The man had got the better of the Jew.