and ample land, and
because Thou didst bring us forth, O Lord our God, from the land of
Egypt, and didst deliver us from the house of bondage----_'

Barstein heard no more for the moment; the paradox of this
retrospective gratitude was too absorbing. What! Sir Asher was
thankful because over three thousand years ago his ancestors had
obtained--not without hard fighting for it--a land which had already
been lost again for eighteen centuries. What a marvellous long memory
for a race to have!

Delivered from the house of bondage, forsooth! Sir Asher, himself--and
here a musing smile crossed the artist's lips--had never even known a
house of bondage, unless, indeed, the House of Commons (from which he
had been delivered by the Radical reaction) might be so regarded, and
his own house was, as he was fond of saying, Liberty Hall. But that
the Russian Jew should still rejoice in the redemption from Egypt! O
miracle of pious patience! O sublime that grazed the ridiculous!

But Sir Asher was still praying on:

'_Have mercy, O Lord our God, upon Israel Thy people, upon Jerusalem
Thy city, upon Zion the abiding place of Thy glory, upon the kingdom
of the house of David, Thine anointed...._'

Barstein lost himself in a fresh reverie. Here was indeed the
Palestinian patriarch. Not with the corporation of Middleton, nor the
lobbies of Westminster, not with his colossal business, not even with
the glories of the British Empire, was Sir Asher's true heart. He had
but caught phrases from the environment. To his deepest self he was
not even a Briton. '_Have mercy, O Lord, upon Israel Thy people._'
Despite all his outward pomp and prosperity, he felt himself one of
that dispersed and maltreated band of brothers who had for eighteen
centuries resisted alike the storm of persecution and the sunshine of
tolerance, and whose one consolation in the long exile was the dream
of Zion. The artist in Barstein began to thrill. What more fascinating
than to catch sight of the dreamer beneath the manufacturer, the
Hebrew visionary behind the English M.P.!

This palatial dwelling-place with its liveried lackeys was, then, no
fort of Philistinism in which an artist must needs asphyxiate, but a
very citadel of the spirit. A new respect for his host began to steal
upon him. Involuntarily he sought the face of the daughter; the
secret of her beauty was, after all, not so mysterious. Old Asher had
a soul, and 'the soul is form and doth the body make