was wondering why the old arguments sounded so different, so much
more convincing, from your lips," murmured Esther. "Now I know; because
he wears a white tie. That sets up all my bristles of contradiction when
he opens his mouth."

"But I wear a white tie, too," said Raphael, his smile broadening in
sympathy with the slow response on the girl's serious face.

"That's not a trade-mark," she protested. "But forgive me; I didn't
know Strelitski was a friend of yours. I won't say a word against him
any more. His sermons really are above the average, and he strives more
than the others to make Judaism more spiritual."

"More spiritual!" he repeated, the pained expression returning. "Why,
the very theory of Judaism has always been the spiritualization of the
material."

"And the practice of Judaism has always been the materialization of the
spiritual," she answered.

He pondered the saying thoughtfully, his face growing sadder.

"You have lived among your books," Esther went on. "I have lived among
the brutal facts. I was born in the Ghetto, and when you talk of the
mission of Israel, silent sardonic laughter goes through me as I think
of the squalor and the misery."

"God works through human suffering; his ways are large," said Raphael,
almost in a whisper.

"And wasteful," said Esther. "Spare me clerical platitudes a la
Strelitski. I have seen so much."

"And suffered much?" he asked gently.

She nodded scarce perceptibly. "Oh, if you only knew my life!"

"Tell it me," he said. His voice was soft and caressing. His frank soul
seemed to pierce through all conventionalities, and to go straight to
hers.

"I cannot, not now," she murmured. "There is so much to tell."

"Tell me a little," he urged.

She began to speak of her history, scarce knowing why, forgetting he was
a stranger. Was it racial affinity, or was it merely the spiritual
affinity of souls that feel their identity through all differences of
brain?

"What is the use?" she said. "You, with your childhood, could never
realize mine. My mother died when I was seven; my father was a Russian
pauper alien who rarely got work. I had an elder brother of brilliant
promise. He died before he was thirteen. I had a lot of brothers and
sisters and a grandmother, and we all lived, half starved, in a garret."

Her eyes grew humid at the recollection; she saw the spacious
drawing-room and the dainty bric-a-brac through a mist.

"Poor child!" murmured Raphael.