d
that's some months ahead. I'll do the Academy for you if you like."

"Thank you. Won't Sidney stare if you pulverize him in _The Flag of
Judah_? Some of the pictures have also Jewish subjects, you know."

"Yes, but if I mistake not, they're invariably done by Christian
artists."

"Nearly always," he admitted pensively. "I wish we had a Jewish
allegorical painter to express the high conceptions of our sages."

"As he would probably not know what they are,"--she murmured. Then,
seeing him rise as if to go, she said: "Won't you have a cup of tea?"

"No, don't trouble," he answered.

"Oh yes, do!" she pleaded. "Or else I shall think you're angry with me
for not asking you before." And she rang the bell. She discovered, to
her amusement, that Raphael took two pieces of sugar per cup, but that
if they were not inserted, he did not notice their absence. Over tea,
too, Raphael had a new idea, this time fraught with peril to the Sevres
tea-pot.

"Why couldn't you write us a Jewish serial story?" he said suddenly.
"That would be a novelty in communal journalism."

Esther looked startled by the proposition.

"How do you know I could?" she said after a silence.

"I don't know," he replied. "Only I fancy you could. Why not?" he said
encouragingly. "You don't know what you can do till you try. Besides you
write poetry."

"The Jewish public doesn't like the looking-glass," she answered him,
shaking her head.

"Oh, you can't say that. They've only objected as yet to the distorting
mirror. You're thinking of the row over that man Armitage's book. Now,
why not write an antidote to that book? There now, there's an idea for
you."

"It _is_ an idea!" said Esther with overt sarcasm. "You think art can be
degraded into an antidote."

"Art is not a fetish," he urged. "What degradation is there in art
teaching a noble lesson?"

"Ah, that is what you religious people will never understand," she said
scathingly. "You want everything to preach."

"Everything does preach something," he retorted. "Why not have the
sermon good?"

"I consider the original sermon _was_ good," she said defiantly. "It
doesn't need an antidote."

"How can you say that? Surely, merely as one who was born a Jewess, you
wouldn't care for the sombre picture drawn by this Armitage to stand as
a portrait of your people."

She shrugged her shoulders--the ungraceful shrug of the Ghetto. "Why
not? It is one-sided, but it is true."

"I don't deny that;