aphael was mad. They did their
best to hush it up, but among themselves they pitied him behind his
back. Even Sidney considered his cousin Raphael pushed a dubious virtue
too far in treating people's very prejudices with the deference due to
earnest reasoned opinions.

"But we know enough of the book to know we are badly treated," protested
the hostess.

"We have always been badly treated in literature," said Raphael. "We are
made either angels or devils. On the one hand, Lessing and George Eliot,
on the other, the stock dramatist and novelist with their low-comedy
villain."

"Oh," said Mrs. Goldsmith, doubtfully, for she could not quite think
Raphael had become infected by his cousin's propensity for paradox. "Do
you think George Eliot and Lessing didn't understand the Jewish
character?"

"They are the only writers who have ever understood it," affirmed Miss
Cissy Levine, emphatically.

A little scornful smile played for a second about the mouth of the dark
little girl.

"Stop a moment," said Sidney. "I've been so busy doing justice to this
delicious asparagus, that I have allowed Raphael to imagine nobody here
has read _Mordecai Josephs_. I have, and I say there is more actuality
in it than in _Daniel Deronda_ and _Nathan der Weise_ put together. It
is a crude production, all the same; the writer's artistic gift seems
handicapped by a dead-weight of moral platitudes and highfalutin, and
even mysticism. He not only presents his characters but moralizes over
them--actually cares whether they are good or bad, and has yearnings
after the indefinable--it is all very young. Instead of being satisfied
that Judaea gives him characters that are interesting, he actually
laments their lack of culture. Still, what he has done is good enough to
make one hope his artistic instinct will shake off his moral."

"Oh, Sidney, what are you saying?" murmured Addie.

"It's all right, little girl. You don't understand Greek."

"It's not Greek," put in Raphael. "In Greek art, beauty of soul and
beauty of form are one. It's French you are talking, though the ignorant
_ateliers_ where you picked it up flatter themselves it's Greek."

"It's Greek to Addie, anyhow," laughed Sidney. "But that's what makes
the anti-Semitic chapters so unsatisfactory."

"We all felt their unsatisfactoriness, if we could not analyze it so
cleverly," said the hostess.

"We all felt it," said Mrs. Montagu Samuels.

"Yes, that's it," said Sidney, bland