m
reported dolefully that he was a changed man. Gone was the
light-hearted and light-footed dancer of the Paris pavement. Silent
the licentious wit of the neo-Pagan. This was a new being with
brooding brow and pained eyes that lit up only when they beheld his
dream. Never had Bohemia known such a transformation.

IV

But a change came over the spirit of the dream. Before he could
seriously plan out his journey to Palestine, he met Mabel Aaronsberg
in the flesh. She was staying in town for the season in charge of an
aunt, and the meeting occurred in one of the galleries of the newer
art, in front of Mabel's own self in marble. She praised the Psyche
without in the least recognising herself, and Barstein, albeit
disconcerted, could not but admit how far his statue was from the
breathing beauty of the original.

After this the Jewish borderland of Bohemia, where writers and
painters are courted, began to see Barstein again. But, unfortunately,
this was not Mabel's circle, and Barstein was reduced to getting
himself invited to that Jewish Bayswater, his loathing for which had
not been overcome even by his new-found nationalism. Here, amid
hundreds of talking and dancing shadows, with which some shadowy self
of his own danced and talked, he occasionally had a magic hour of
reality--with Mabel.

One could not be real and not talk of the national dream. Mabel, who
took most of her opinions from her brother Julius, was frankly
puzzled, though her marmoreal gift of beautiful silence saved her
lover from premature shocks. She had, indeed, scarcely heard of such
things. Zionism was something in the East End. Nobody in her class
ever mentioned it. But, then, Barstein was a sculptor and strange,
and, besides, he did not look at all like a Jew, so it didn't sound so
horrible in his mouth. His lithe figure stood out almost Anglo-Saxon
amid the crowds of hulking undersized young men, and though his
manners were not so good as a Christian's--she never forgot his
blunder at her father's dinner-party--still, he looked up to one with
almost a Christian's adoration, instead of sizing one up with an
Oriental's calculation. These other London Jews thought her
provincial, she knew, whereas Barstein had one day informed her she
was universal. Julius, too, had admired Barstein's sculpture, the
modern note in which had been hailed by the Oxford elect. But what
most fascinated Mabel was the constant eulogy of her lover's work in
the Chris