Children of the Ghetto

and New. It is full of sublime truths, noble apophthegms, endless touches of nature, and great poetry. Our tiny race may well be proud of having given humanity its greatest as well as its most widely circulated books. Why can't Judaism take a natural view of things and an honest pride in its genuine history, instead of building its synagogues on shifting sand?'

'In Germany, later in America, the reconstruction of Judaism has been attempted in every possible way; inspiration has been sought not only in literature, but in archaeology, and even in anthropology; it is these which have proved the shifting sand. You see your scepticism is not even original.' He smiled a little, serene in the largeness of his faith. His complacency grated upon her. She jumped up. 'We always seem to get into religion, you and I,' she said. 'I wonder why. It is certain we shall never agree. Mosaism is magnificent, no doubt, but I cannot help feeling Mr. Graham is right when he points out its limitations. Where would the art of the world be if the second Commandment had been obeyed? Is there any such thing as an absolute system of morality? How is it the Chinese have got on all these years without religion? Why should the Jews claim the patent in those moral ideas which you find just as well in all the great writers of antiquity? Why-?' she stopped suddenly, seeing his smile had broadened.

'Which of all these objections am I to answer?' he asked merrily. 'Some I'm sure you don't mean.'

'I mean all those you can't answer. So please don't try. After all, you're not a professional explainer of the universe, that I should heckle you thus.'

'Oh, but I set up to be,' he protested.

'No, you don't. You haven't called me a blasphemer once. I'd better go before you become really professional. I shall be late for dinner.'

'What nonsense! It is only four o'clock,' he pleaded, consulting an old-fashioned silver watch.

'As late as that!' said Esther in horrified tones. 'Good-bye! Take care to go through my 'copy' in case any heresies have filtered into it.'

'Your copy? Did you give it me?' he inquired.

'Of course I did. You took it from me. Where did you put it? Oh, I hope you haven't mixed it up with those papers. It'll be a terrible task to find it,' cried Esther excitedly.

'I wonder if I could have put it in the pigeon-hole for 'copy,'' he said. 'Yes! what luck!'

Esther laughed heartily. 'You seem tremendously surprised to find anything in its right place.'

The moment of solemn parting had come, yet she found herself laughing on. Perhaps she was glad to find the farewell easier than she had foreseen, it had certainly been made easier by the theological passage of arms, which brought out all her latent antagonism to the prejudiced young pietist. Her hostility gave rather a scornful ring to the laugh, which ended with a suspicion of hysteria.

'What a lot of stuff you've written,' he said. 'I shall never be able to get this into one number.'

'I didn't intend you should. It's to be used in instalments, if it's good enough. I did it all in advance, because I'm going away.'

'Going away!' he cried, arresting himself in the midst of an inhalation of smoke. 'Where?'

'I don't know,' she said wearily.

He looked alarm and interrogation.

'I am going to leave the Goldsmiths,' she said. 'I haven't decided exactly what to do next.'

'I hope you haven't quarrelled with them.'

'No, no, not at all. In fact they don't even know I am going. I only tell you in confidence. Please don't say anything to anybody. Good-bye. I may not come across you again. So this may be a last good-bye.' She extended her hand; he took it mechanically.

'I have no right to pry into your confidence,' he said anxiously, 'but you make me very uneasy.' He did not let go her hand, the warm touch quickened his sympathy. He felt he could not part with her and let her drift into Heaven knew what. 'Won't you tell me your trouble?' he went on. 'I am sure it is some trouble. Perhaps I can help you. I should be so glad if you would give me the opportunity.'

The tears struggled to her eyes, but she did not speak. They stood in silence, with their hands still clasped, feeling very near to each other, and yet still so far apart.

'Cannot you trust me?' he asked. 'I know you are unhappy, but I had hoped you had grown cheerfuller of late. You told me so much at our first meeting, surely you might trust me yet a little farther.'

'I have told you enough,' she said at last 'I cannot any longer eat the bread of charity; I must go away and try to earn my own living.'

'But what will you do?'

'What do other girls do? Teaching, needlework, anything. Remember, I'm an experienced teacher and a graduate to boot.' Her pathetic smile lit up the face with tremulous tenderness.

'But you would be quite alone in the world,' he said, solicitude vibrating in every syllable.

'I am used to being quite alone in the world.'

The phrase threw a flash of light along the backward vista of her life with the Goldsmiths, and filled his soul with pity and yearning.

'But suppose you fail?'

'If I fail-' she repeated, and rounded off the sentence with a shrug. It was the apathetic, indifferent shrug of Moses Ansell; only his was the shrug of faith in Providence, hers of despair. It filled Raphael's heart with deadly cold and his soul with sinister forebodings. The pathos of her position seemed to him intolerable.

'No, no, this must not be!' he cried, and his hand gripped hers fiercely, as if he were afraid of her being dragged away by main force. He was terribly agitated; his whole being seemed to be undergoing profound and novel emotions. Their eyes met; in one and the same instant the knowledge broke upon her that she loved him, and that if she chose to play the woman he was hers, and life a Paradisian dream. The sweetness of the thought intoxicated her, thrilled her veins with fire. But the next instant she was chilled as by a gray cold fog. The realities of things came back, a whirl of self-contemptuous thoughts blent with a hopeless sense of the harshness of life. Who was she to aspire to such a match? Had her earlier day-dream left her no wiser than that? The Schnorrer's daughter setting her cap at the wealthy Oxford man, forsooth! What would people say? And what would they say if they knew how she had sought him out in his busy seclusion to pitch a tale of woe and move him by his tenderness of heart to a pity he mistook momentarily for love? The image of Levi came back suddenly; she quivered, reading herself through his eyes. And yet would not his crude view be right? Suppress the consciousness as she would in her maiden breast, had she not been urged hither by an irresistible impulse? Knowing what she felt now, she could not realize she had been ignorant of it when she set out. She was a deceitful, scheming little thing. Angry with herself, she averted her gaze from the eyes that hungered for her, though they were yet unlit by self-consciousness; she loosed her hand from his, and as if the cessation of the contact restored her self-respect, some of her anger passed unreasonably towards him.

'What right, have you to say it must not be?' she inquired haughtily. 'Do you think I can't take care of myself, that I need any one to protect me or to help me?'

'No-I-I-only mean-' he stammered in infinite distress, feeling himself somehow a blundering brute.

'Remember I am not like the girls you are used to meet. I have known the worst that life can offer. I can stand alone, yes, and face the whole world. Perhaps you don't know that I wrote Mordecai Josephs, the book you burlesqued so mercilessly!'

'You wrote it!'

'Yes, I. I am Edward Armitage. Did those initials never strike you? I wrote it and I glory in it. Though all Jewry cry out 'The picture is false,' I say it is true. So now you know the truth. Proclaim it to all Hyde Park and Maida Vale, tell it to all your narrow-minded friends and acquaintances, and let them turn and rend me. I can live without them or their praise. Too long they have cramped my soul. Now at last I am going to cut myself free. From them and from you and all your petty prejudices and interests. Good-bye, for ever.'

She went out abruptly, leaving the room dark and Raphael shaken and dumbfounded; she went down the stairs and into the keen bright air, with a fierce exultation at her heart, an intoxicating sense of freedom and defiance. It was over. She had vindicated herself to herself and to the imaginary critics. The last link that bound her to Jewry was snapped; it was impossible it could ever be reforged. Raphael knew her in her true colors at last. She seemed to herself a Spinoza the race had cast out.

The editor of The Flag of Judah stood for some minutes as if petrified; then he turned suddenly to the litter on his table and rummaged among it feverishly. At last, as with a happy recollection,