THE man had got the better of the Jew; and the man retained the upper hand. There came no reaction. Elias Bacharach’s Judaism—or so much of it, at least, as bore upon the question of matrimony—had apparently suffered sudden and total annihilation. Under the light of love, it had apparently behaved as those hackneyed images in the Etruscan tombs behaved under the light of the sun—collapsed into nothingness. Looking backward, and repeating to himself the views upon intermarriage, which, the rabbi said, there had never been a Bacharach to doubt, he was amazed at their glaring unreasonableness, at their enormity even, and could only ask incredulously, “Is it possible that I ever believed that rubbish?” The philosophy of the matter was extremely simple. Elias had never bestowed upon the rabbi’s religious teachings any skeptical consideration. He had accepted them as facts stated upon authority—had taken the rabbi’s word for them, just as he had taken the rabbi’s word for the boundaries of the State of Nebraska, and for the date of the Battle of Bunker Hill. But, now, when, for the first time, circumstances had led him to bring to bear upon them a little analysis and common-sense, to exercise a little his right and his power of private judgment, now their absurdity had become startlingly conspicuous. Then, of course, his wish fostered his thought. Every spontaneous impulse of his nature aided and abetted his intelligence in its iconoclasm. He wanted—he wanted—to marry Christine Redwood; and a theology which taught that, merely because the accident of birth had made of him a Jew, and of her a Christian, such marriage would be sinful, thereby proved itself to be the offspring of prejudice and superstition.

Christine had said that she would tell her father; but on second thoughts she found that she lacked the proper courage; and so Elias, not without some trepidation, had to take the mission upon himself. The old man, at the outset, professed no end of astonishment, and considerable indignation. “So!” he cried. “I engage you to paint my daughter’s portrait, and you spend the time making love to her! A pretty kettle of fish, as I’m alive!” But by degrees his amiability was restored; and finally he remarked, “Well, Mr. Bacharach, though you are a Hebrew, you’re white; and any how, religion don’t worry us much in this household, and never did. I’m a Universalist, myself; and Chris—well, I guess no one knows what she is. One thing’s certain—she might have gone further, and fared worse; she might, for a fact. You’re a perfect gentleman; and you can’t help it, if you were born a Jew. You don’t look like one, and you don’t act like one. Of course, there’s your name—Bacharach—a regular jaw-breaker; but I shan’t stick on a name. It ain’t I that’s got to bear it; and so long as Chris is satisfied, it ain’t for me to grumble. I guess she’ll smell about as sweet under it, as she does under her present one. You see, I agree with the Great Bard. Any how, if she’s made up her mind to have ye, I suppose I’ll be obliged to say yes, sooner or later; and it’ll save time and trouble for me to say it sooner.” So it was arranged that they should be married early in the spring, that they should spend the summer traveling in Europe, and that in the autumn they should return to New York, and domicile themselves under Redwood’s roof.

“The man who marries my daughter,” stipulated the old gentleman, with a grim smile, “has got to marry me. I ain’t pretty, but I’m solid; and I’m not going to be separated from her in my old age. He’s got to fetch his traps, and live in this house, besides, because I’m used to it, and I don’t mean to quit it till I’m carried out horizontally. It’s big enough, and to spare, the Lord knows. Come and look it over.”

Elias followed the old man from cellar to garret. On the third floor his conductor threw open a door, and announced. “This is her room.” Elias’s memory of the few brief seconds that he had been permitted to pass upon Christine’s threshold, looking into her room, breathing the sweet air of it, and noting its hundred pretty little girlish fixings—inanimate companions of her most intimate life—thrilled in his heart many a time afterward. Was it not for him, her lover, like a glimpse into the Holy of Holies?

They were to be married in the spring. Now it was December. Meanwhile they had nothing to do but to make the most of the present. They saw each other nearly every day; and those days on which something prevented them from seeing each other, were very long and very dark days to Elias Bacharach. How did they amuse themselves? Innocently enough, and with no sort of difficulty. If an exhaustive account of their doings were reduced to writing, it would seem very trivial and very monotonous; but to them, basking in the light of new-born love, the trivial and the monotonous did not exist. High and low, far and wide, the world had been invested with the splendor, the mystery, and the majesty of the golden age. Yes, indeed: the period, long or short, during which first love holds sway over our hearts, tyrant though the ruler be, is notoriously our golden age, never to come but once. In this respect history does not repeat itself. Elias felt that each of his five senses had been sharpened, and that, moreover, he had acquired a sixth sense, a super-sense. The homeliest things, the most familiar sights, the commonest occurrences, took on a beauty, a significance, a suggestiveness, undreamed of until now. They aroused thoughts in his brain, emotions in his breast. He had used to regard New York as a somewhat sordid and unpicturesque metropolis: now he held it to be the most romantic city of the earth. Did she not dwell within its walls? Certainly, in former years, the Eighth Avenue horse-railway, with its dingy cars and shabby passengers, had had no special fascination for him; but now the bare mention of its name would rouse a sentimental tenderness in his bosom. Was not that the line by which he traveled when he went to see her? Everywhere he became aware of new aspects and new influences, to which heretofore his consciousness had been hermetically sealed. In a letter written by him to Christine at about this time—for, despite the frequency of their meetings, they found it necessary to keep the post-office busied on their behalf—Elias indulges in the following rhapsody:

“I have waked up from a long sleep, a period of torpor, diversified by vague dreams, into fresh, keen, sensitive life. I have begun to love; and until one begins to love, one is only half born. Until one loves, half the faculties, half the activities, which one possesses, lie in a dormant state, are merely potential, latent. For love—is it not the very soul and life of life itself? I know a poem which says: ‘Through love to light! Oh, wonderful the way, that leads from darkness to the perfect day!’ That expresses exactly what I mean. The life I lived before I knew you, and began to love you, compared to the life I live now, as the dusk of early morning compares to the brilliant day that comes with the rising of the sun. Where there was chill, now there is warmth. Where there was silence, now there is music. Where there was gloom, now there is glory.

“Things that were before invisible or insignificant, now force themselves upon my attention, and have a meaning and a solemnity. It is as though you had touched me with a vivifying wand—as though you had given me to drink of the elixir of life. Well, you have given me to drink of the elixir of love; and that is even more potent and marvelous in its effects. These are not mere phrases, Christine, dashed off in enthusiasm, without being weighed. They are an imperfect expression of very real and practical facts. See the direct and manifest influence that my love of you has exercised upon my work, my art. I used to tell myself, with a good deal of complacency, that the artist was a sort of priest; that he ought to be a celibate, that he ought to consecrate the whole of himself to his art, that the muse should be his wife, that no mortal woman should divide his homage with her. I had one formula that pleased me especially. I said,4 The muse is a jealous mistress. She will brook no rivalry. To win her favor, one must renounce the world, and devote himself exclusively to her service.’ And I used to fancy that I really believed this high-flown nonsense. But what sophism! What cant! What puerile pinning of my faith to a hollow set of words? For the very first requirement to successful accomplishment in art—what is it? Isn’t there a spiritual equipment as much needed by the artist, as indispensable to his productiveness, as his material equipment of palette, paint-tubes, and brushes? Why, the very sinequa-non is this; that he shall live. I mean, that he shall be intensely human; that he shall think clearly, feel deeply, and see truly—see the truth, the whole truth, and the very heart of the truth. Until one has lived in this sense, one’s art will never be real art. It will only be a nicer, a more complex, species of mechanics. It will be the body of art, without the spirit of it. Well, did I live, did I think, feel, see, before I knew you, and loved you? A little, perhaps; vaguely, incompletely; by fits and starts; as in a glass, darkly. But now? Oh, it is as though you had given me a soul! You have quickened the dormant soul that was in me, given it eyes, ears, perceptions, sympathies. At last I am alive, tingling and throbbing to my finger tips with life, with warm, buoyant, intense, eager life. My existence now is a constant exaltation, a constant inspiration. Whatever my eye looks upon, whatever my ear hears, whatever my fingers touch, means something, says something to me, and wakes a response in my own heart. I think, feel, see, and consequently paint, with a zest, an impetus, a power, and yet a serenity, a repose, of which I never even had a conception in the old days, Christine! Oh, my love! ‘...When I look at you, Christine, and realize that you are my betrothed—that you love me, and that you have promised to be my wife; and when I take your little hand in mine, and stroke it, and feel its wondrous warmth and softness, and bring it to my lips, and breathe that most delicate fragrance which ever clings to it; and when I gaze into the luminous depths of your eyes, and behold your spirit burning far, far down in them: oh! my blood seems to catch fire; each breath is like a draught of some magic, intoxicating vapor; I come near to fainting, for the great joy that fills my heart—fills it, and thrills it. I dare say all men who love, and are loved in return, are happy. But none can be so supremely happy as I am, so miraculously happy; because no one else loves you, and is loved by you. And other women are no more like you than—than dust is like fire, than glass is like diamond, than water is like wine. You mustn’t laugh at me for saying this. It is really, honestly true. They resemble you in outward form, of course; they, too, have hands and feet, shaped more or less upon the same pattern that yours are shaped upon. But you—you have something—something which I can not name or describe—something subtle, impalpable, and yet unmistakable—something supersensual, celestial—which makes you as different from them as—it is a grotesque comparison, but it will show you what I mean—as a magnet is different from common iron. It is a difference of quality, which I can not find any words exactly to define. I suppose really that it is simply your soul—that you have a purer, finer soul than other women. Whatever it is, I recognized it, and felt it, with a thick thrill, as one feels an electric spark, the first time I ever saw you—reflected in that old, time-stained looking-glass, between the windows in your father’s shop. I recognize and feel it perpetually, everywhere I go. All the other women that I see have about them a touch of the earth, from which you are free; and they lack that touch of heaven, which you have....

“Why, from among the millions of men upon this planet, why should I have been the one chosen to enjoy this unique rapture? What have I done to deserve that the single peerless and perfect lady should be mine? It is incomprehensible. In a world built up of marvels, it is the prime, the crowning, the over-topping marvel. It would be incredible, were it not indubitably true. But sometimes, true though I know it to be, I become so acutely conscious of the wonder and incomprehensibility of it, that I doubt it in spite of myself. Then I think: may be, after all, it is a dream. At such moments, I hasten to see you, to verify it. I can not reach you quickly enough. At what a snail’s pace the horse-car drags along! How endless are the intervals when it stops, to take in or to let off a passenger! I count the seconds, I count the inches. All the while, my soul is trembling within me; nor does it cease to tremble, till I have crossed your threshold, and beheld you with my eyes, and touched you with my hands, and thus, so far as seeing and feeling are believing, convinced myself that you really exist, and that my great happiness is not a phantasm—unless indeed, my whole life is one long phantasm, one continuous dream, which sometimes I think may be the explanation of it. This great, vast happiness! It would be ungrateful and irreverent to suppose that it has fallen to my lot by mere chance or accident; and yet I can not understand why God should have so favored me above all other living men; why He should have selected me to receive the greatest blessing that He had to bestow—your love, my queen!”

And in a letter written by her to him, she says: “What if we had never known each other? That would have been very possible, wouldn’t it? The world is so large, and there are so many, many people, and the likelihood of any two happening to come together is so very slight, it would have been quite possible for us to have gone through life, and died, without ever having known each other. Think of the many years that we did............