further details with the landlord, and warmly shook his hand. However, he made haste to leave the tavern; he did not care for its musty air and all the noise, and the drunk, bawling customers repelled him.
When he came out into the street the sun had just set, and only a dull pink twilight lingered in the sky. The evening was mild and pure. Walking slowly, the old man went home musing on events that seemed to him as strange and yet as pleasing as a dream. There was reverence in his heart, and it trembled as happily as when thefirst bell rang from the church tower calling the congregation to prayers, to be answered by the bells of all the other towers nearby, their voices deep and high, muffled and joyful, chiming and murmuring, like human beings calling out in joy and sorrow and pain. It seemed to him extraordinary that after following a sober and straightforward path all his life, his heart should be inflamed at this late hour by the soft radiance of divine miracles, but he dared not doubt it, and he carried the grace of that radiance for which he had longed home through the dark streets, blessedly awake and yet in a wonderful dream.
Days had passed by, and still the blank canvas stood on the painter’s easel. Now, however, it was not despondency paralysing his hands, but a sure inner confidence that no longer counted the days, was in no hurry, and instead waited in serene silence while he held his powers in restraint. Esther had been timid and shy when she first visited the studio, but she soon became more forthcoming, gentler and less timid, basking in his fatherly warmth as he bestowed it on the simple, frightened girl. They spent these days merely talking to each other, like friends meeting after long years apart who have to get acquainted again before putting ardent feeling into heartfelt words and reviving their old intimacy. And soon there was a secret bond between these two people, so dissimilar and yet so like each other in a certain simplicity—one of them a man who had learnt that clarity and silence are at the heart of life, an experienced man schooled in simplicity by long days and years; the other a girl who had never yet truly felt alive, but had dreamt her days away as if surrounded by darkness, and who now felt the first ray from a world of light reach her heart, reflecting it back in a glow of radiance. The difference between the sexes meant nothing to the two of them; such thoughts were now extinguished in him and merely cast the evening light of memory into his life, and as for the girl, her dimsense of her own femininity had not fully awoken and was expressed only as vague, restless longing that had no aim as yet. A barrier still stood between them, but might soon give way—their different races and religions, the discipline of blood that has learnt to see itself as strange and hostile, nurturing distrust that only a moment of great love will overcome. Without that unconscious idea in her mind the girl, whose heart was full of pent-up affection, would long ago have thrown herself in tears on the old man’s breast, confessing her secret terrors and growing longings, the pains and joys of her lonely existence. As it was, however, she showed her feelings only in glances and silences, restless gestures and hints. Whenever she felt everything in her trying to flow towards the light and express itself in clear, fluent words of ardent emotion, a secret power took hold of her like a dark, invisible hand and stifled them. And the old man did not forget that all his life he had regarded Jews if not with hatred, at least with a sense that they were alien. He hesitated to begin his picture because he hoped that the girl had been placed in his path only to be converted to the true faith. The miracle was not to be worked for him; he was to work it for her. He wanted to see in her eyes the same deep longing for the Saviour that the Mother of God must herself have felt when she trembled in blessed expectation of
When he came out into the street the sun had just set, and only a dull pink twilight lingered in the sky. The evening was mild and pure. Walking slowly, the old man went home musing on events that seemed to him as strange and yet as pleasing as a dream. There was reverence in his heart, and it trembled as happily as when thefirst bell rang from the church tower calling the congregation to prayers, to be answered by the bells of all the other towers nearby, their voices deep and high, muffled and joyful, chiming and murmuring, like human beings calling out in joy and sorrow and pain. It seemed to him extraordinary that after following a sober and straightforward path all his life, his heart should be inflamed at this late hour by the soft radiance of divine miracles, but he dared not doubt it, and he carried the grace of that radiance for which he had longed home through the dark streets, blessedly awake and yet in a wonderful dream.
Days had passed by, and still the blank canvas stood on the painter’s easel. Now, however, it was not despondency paralysing his hands, but a sure inner confidence that no longer counted the days, was in no hurry, and instead waited in serene silence while he held his powers in restraint. Esther had been timid and shy when she first visited the studio, but she soon became more forthcoming, gentler and less timid, basking in his fatherly warmth as he bestowed it on the simple, frightened girl. They spent these days merely talking to each other, like friends meeting after long years apart who have to get acquainted again before putting ardent feeling into heartfelt words and reviving their old intimacy. And soon there was a secret bond between these two people, so dissimilar and yet so like each other in a certain simplicity—one of them a man who had learnt that clarity and silence are at the heart of life, an experienced man schooled in simplicity by long days and years; the other a girl who had never yet truly felt alive, but had dreamt her days away as if surrounded by darkness, and who now felt the first ray from a world of light reach her heart, reflecting it back in a glow of radiance. The difference between the sexes meant nothing to the two of them; such thoughts were now extinguished in him and merely cast the evening light of memory into his life, and as for the girl, her dimsense of her own femininity had not fully awoken and was expressed only as vague, restless longing that had no aim as yet. A barrier still stood between them, but might soon give way—their different races and religions, the discipline of blood that has learnt to see itself as strange and hostile, nurturing distrust that only a moment of great love will overcome. Without that unconscious idea in her mind the girl, whose heart was full of pent-up affection, would long ago have thrown herself in tears on the old man’s breast, confessing her secret terrors and growing longings, the pains and joys of her lonely existence. As it was, however, she showed her feelings only in glances and silences, restless gestures and hints. Whenever she felt everything in her trying to flow towards the light and express itself in clear, fluent words of ardent emotion, a secret power took hold of her like a dark, invisible hand and stifled them. And the old man did not forget that all his life he had regarded Jews if not with hatred, at least with a sense that they were alien. He hesitated to begin his picture because he hoped that the girl had been placed in his path only to be converted to the true faith. The miracle was not to be worked for him; he was to work it for her. He wanted to see in her eyes the same deep longing for the Saviour that the Mother of God must herself have felt when she trembled in blessed expectation of
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