evidence than those old Spanish
Jews--Marannos, they were called, weren't they?--who wore the Christian
mask for generations. Practically, many of us are Marannos still; I
don't mean the Jews who are on the stage and the press and all that,
but the Jews who have gone on believing. One Day of Atonement I amused
myself by noting the pretexts on the shutters of shops that were closed
in the Strand. 'Our annual holiday,' Stock-taking day,' 'Our annual
bean-feast.' 'Closed for repairs.'"

"Well, it's something if they keep the Fast at all," said Mr. Henry
Goldsmith. "It shows spirituality is not dead in them."

"Spirituality!" sneered Sidney. "Sheer superstition, rather. A dread of
thunderbolts. Besides, fasting is a sensuous _attraction_. But for the
fasting, the Day of Atonement would have long since died out for these
men. 'Our annual bean-feast'! There's witnesses for you."

"We cannot help if we have false witnesses among us," said Raphael Leon
quietly. "Our mission is to spread the truth of the Torah till the earth
is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

"But we don't spread it."

"We do. Christianity and Mohammedanism are offshoots of Judaism; through
them we have won the world from Paganism and taught it that God is one
with the moral law."

"Then we are somewhat in the position of an ancient school-master
lagging superfluous in the school-room where his whilom pupils are
teaching."

"By no means. Rather of one who stays on to protest against the false
additions of his whilom pupils."

"But we don't protest."

"Our mere existence since the Dispersion is a protest," urged Raphael.
"When the stress of persecution lightens, we may protest more
consciously. We cannot have been preserved in vain through so many
centuries of horrors, through the invasions of the Goths and Huns,
through the Crusades, through the Holy Roman Empire, through the times
of Torquemada. It is not for nothing that a handful of Jews loom so
large in the history of the world that their past is bound up with every
noble human effort, every high ideal, every development of science,
literature and art. The ancient faith that has united us so long must
not be lost just as it is on the very eve of surviving the faiths that
sprang from it, even as it has survived Egypt, Assyria, Rome, Greece
and the Moors. If any of us fancy we have lost it, let us keep together
still. Who knows but that it will be born again in u