Alexandra (Classic Reprint) - Gladys Schmitt

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Résumé :
Excerpt from Alexandra

All right, go ahead, if you get any satisfaction out of it. But isn't that whole Alexandra business over and done with? Can't you make yourself let it alone?

No, I'll not be letting it alone. Somewhere in this second half of my life I will find out what she did during those three days when she stayed in New York. Somehow I will find the explanation for the burst of annihilating anger that she let loose on Les Talbot. And in the meantime, I cannot hide Alexandra as my husband hides her, under the anti-labor legislation and the Russian veto and the British machinations in Pales tine. I Will have to have some picture, even if it is a distorted picture. What I create out of my confusion will be undependable, and useful only to myself. For in this case the eye that sees is blurred by the magical mists that stand between us and'the good gone years, and the hand that draws cannot make a true line because of the coldness that has been upon it since that N ovem ber afternoon - no, nor a harsh line, either, since from the beginning it has been tentative and shaken with love.

I suppose I ought to mention at once that I am a Jew. The proper term is Jewess, of course, but I have never managed to attach my person to that word. Sir Walter Scott put a dark, basaltic gleam upon it for my class and generation. Ever since Ivanhoe became re quired reading in the public schools, a Jewess has been a highly particularized species, all roses and marble and ravens' wings. But I am no Rebecca. Tawny would be the kindest word you could apply to me. My hair would be red if it weren't so brown, my eyes would be greenif they weren't so gray. I am small and squat, and people are always reminding me that I am warm to touch. I am', then, a tawny and emancipated Jew, I do not have an aquiline nose, nor do I light the candles on Friday evenings; but I am nevertheless - and I state it here because I sense that it is a vital factor in the story -a stranger born within the gates, a Jew.

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