judiced against her?'

He flushed. 'Prej-prejudiced?' he stammered. 'Why should I be
prejudiced? From all I hear it's she that's prejudiced. It's a wonder
she took a Jewess into her service.'

'Where's the wonder? Don't the Southerners have negro servants?' she
asked quietly.

His flush deepened. 'You compare Jews to negroes!'

'I apologize to the negroes. The blacks have at least Liberia. There
is a black President, a black Parliament. We have nothing, nothing!'

'We!' Again that ambiguous plural. But he still instinctively evaded
co-classification.

'Nothing?' he retorted. 'I should have said everything. Every gift of
genius that Nature can shower from her cornucopia.'

'Jewish geniuses!' Her voice had a stinging inflection. 'Don't talk to
me of our geniuses; it is they that have betrayed us. Every other
people has its great men; but our great men--they belong to every
other people. The world absorbs our sap, and damns us for our putrid
remains. Our best must pipe alien tunes and dance to the measures of
the heathen. They build and paint; they write and legislate. But never
a song of Israel do they fashion, nor a picture of Israel, nor a law
of Israel, nor a temple of Israel. Bah! What are they but hirelings?'

Again the passion of her patriotism uplifted and enkindled him. Yes,
it was true. He, too, was but a hireling. But he would become a
Master; he would go back--back to the Ghetto, and this noble Jewess
should be his mate. Thank God he had kept himself free for her. But
ere he could pour out his soul, the bouncing San Franciscan actress
appeared suddenly at his elbow, risking a last desperate assault,
discharging a pathetic tale of a comedian with a cold. Rozenoffski
repelled the attack savagely, but before he could exhaust the enemy's
volubility his red-haired companion had given him a friendly nod and
smile, and retreated into her shrine of duty.

V

He spent a sleepless but happy night, planning out their future
together; her redemption from her hireling status, their joint work
for their people. He was no longer afraid of the sea. He was afraid of
nothing--not even of the _pogroms_ that awaited them in Russia. Russia
itself became dear to him again--the beautiful land of his boyhood,
whose birds and whispering leaves and waters had made his earliest
music.

But dearer than all resurged his Jewish memories. When he went almost
mechanically to the piano on the last afternoon, all these slumberin