Well, I shall do it. I shall live in you. I shall live in you."
His grasp had become convulsive in its force, and Deronda, agitated as he had never been before--the certainty that this was Mirah's brother suffusing his own strange relation to Mordecai with a new solemnity and tenderness--felt his strong young heart beating faster and his lips paling. He shrank from speech. He feared, in Mordecai's present state of exaltation (already an alarming strain on his feeble frame), to utter a word of revelation about Mirah. He feared to make an answer below that high pitch of expectation which resembled a flash from a dying fire, making watchers fear to see it die the faster. His dominant impulse was to do as he had once done before: he laid his firm, gentle hand on the hand that grasped him. Mordecai's, as if it had a soul of its own--for he was not distinctly willing to do what he did--relaxed its grasp, and turned upward under Deronda's. As the two palms met and pressed each other Mordecai recovered some sense of his surroundings, and said,

I shall live in you."
His grasp became convulsive in its force, and Deronda, agitated as never before in his certainty that this was Mirah's brother, felt his strong young heart beating faster and his lips paling. He shrank from speech. He feared, in Mordecai's state of exaltation (already an alarming strain on his feeble frame), to utter a word about Mirah.
Instead, he laid his firm, gentle hand on Mordecai's, which relaxed its grasp, and turned upward. As the two palms pressed each other Mordecai recovered some sense of his surroundings, and said-
