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‘So I did; but now her father is dragging her away to Scotland.’

‘You ought to get married the moment she gets back.’

‘I can’t expect her to rush things–with her father to square. Still, you are not wrong, mother. It’s high time we came to a definite understanding between ourselves at least.’

‘What!’ gasped Mrs. Cohn. ‘Aren’t you engaged?’

‘Oh, in a way, of course. But we’ve never said so in so many words.’

For fear this should be the ‘English’ way, Mrs. Cohn forbore to remark that the definiteness of the Sugarman method was not without compensations. She merely applauded Simon’s more sensible mood.

But Mrs. Cohn was fated to a further season of fret. Day after day the ‘fat letters’ arrived with the Scottish postmark and the faint perfume that always stirred her own wistful sense of lost romance–something far-off and delicious, with the sweetness of roses and the salt of tears. And still the lover, floating in his golden mist, vouchsafed her no definite news.

One night she found him restive beyond his wont. She knew the reason. For two days there had been no scented letter, and she saw how he started at every creak of the garden-gate, as he waited for the last post. When at length a step was heard crunching on the gravel, he rushed from the room, and Mrs. Cohn heard the hall-door open. Her ear, disappointed of the rat-tat, morbidly followed every sound; but it seemed a long time before her boy’s returning footstep reached her. The strange, slow drag of it worked upon her nerves, and her heart grew sick with premonition.

He held out the letter towards her. His face was white. ‘She cannot marry me, because I am a Jew,’ he said tonelessly.

‘Cannot marry you!’ she whispered huskily. ‘Oh, but this must not be! I will go to the father; I will explain! You saved his son–he owes you his daughter.’

He waved her hopelessly back to her seat–for she had started up. ‘It isn’t the father, it’s herself. Now that I won’t let her drift any longer, she can’t bring herself to it. She’s honest, anyway, my little Lucy. She won’t fall back on the old Jew-baiter.’

‘But how dare she–how dare she think herself above you!’ Her dog-like eyes were blazing yet once again.

‘Why are you Jews surprised?’ he said bitterly. ‘You’ve held yourself aloof from the others long enough, God knows. Yet you wonder they’ve got their prejudices, too.’

And, suddenly laying his head on the table, he broke into sobs–sobs that tore at his mother’s heart, that were charged with memories of his ancient tears, of the days of paternal wrath and the rending of ‘The Pirates of Pechili.’ And, again, as in the days when his boyish treasures were changed to ashes, she stole towards him, with an involuntary furtive look to see if S. Cohn’s back was turned, and laid her hands upon his heaving shoulders. But he shook her off! ‘Why didn’t a Boer bullet strike me down?’ Then with a swift pang of remorse he raised his contorted face and drew hers close against it–their love the one thing saved from Anglicization.