They went in to take leave, for the company was breaking up.
"Oh! by the way, Mr. Schöninger," Annette said, recollecting, "did you get the shawl you left here at the last rehearsal? It was thrown on a garden-seat, and forgotten."
"Yes; I stepped in early the next morning, and took it," he said. His countenance changed slightly as he spoke. The eyelids drooped, and his whole air expressed reserve.
"The next morning!" she repeated to herself, but said nothing.
Lawrence went off with Miss Carthusen; and as Mrs. Gerald and Honora went out at the same time with Mr. Schöninger, he asked permission to accompany them.
"How lovely the night is!" Mrs. Gerald murmured, as they walked quietly along under the trees of the avenue, and saw all the beautiful city bathed in moonlight, and ringed about with mountains like a wall. "Heaven can scarcely have a greater physical beauty than earth has sometimes."
"I do not think," the gentleman said, "that heaven will be so much more beautiful than earth, but our eyes will be opened to see the beauties that exist."
He spoke very quietly, with an air of weariness or depression; and, when they reached home, bowed his good-night without speaking.
The two ladies stood a moment in the door, looking out over the town. "If that man were not a Jew, I should find him agreeable," Mrs. Gerald said. "As it is, it seems odd that we should see so much of him."
"I am inclined to believe," Honora said slowly, "that it is not right for us to refuse a friendly intercourse with suitable associates on account of any difference of religion, unless they intrude on us a belief or disbelief which we hold to be sacrilegious."
"Could you love a Jew?" Mrs. Gerald asked, rather abruptly.
Honora considered the matter a little while. "Our Lord loved them, even those who crucified him. I could love them. Besides, I do not believe that the Jews of to-day would practise violence any more than Christians would. We are friendly with Unitarians, yet they are not very different from some Jews. I think we should love everybody but the eternally lost. I could more easily become attached to an upright and conscientious Jew, than to a Catholic who did not practise his religion."
Mr. Schöninger, as soon as he had left the ladies, mended his pace, and strode off rapidly down the hill. In a few minutes he had reached a lighted railroad station, where people were going to and fro.
