“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.

“Strelitski, by the way, lived in our street then.  He sold cigars on commission and earned an honest living.  Sometimes I used to think that is why he never cares to meet my eye; he remembers me and knows I remember him; at other times I thought he knew that I saw through his professions of orthodoxy.  But as you champion him, I suppose I must look for a more creditable reason for his inability to look me straight in the face.  Well, I grew up, I got on well at school, and about ten years ago I won a prize given by Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, whose kindly interest I excited thenceforward.  At thirteen I became a teacher.  This had always been my aspiration:  when it was granted I was more unhappy than ever.  I began to realize acutely that we were terribly poor.  I found it difficult to dress so as to insure the respect of my pupils and colleagues; the work was unspeakably hard and unpleasant; tiresome and hungry little girls had to be ground to suit the inspectors, and fell victims to the then prevalent competition among teachers for a high percentage of passes.  I had to teach Scripture history and I didn’t believe in it.  None of us believed in it; the talking serpent, the Egyptian miracles, Samson, Jonah and the whale, and all that.  Everything about me was sordid and unlovely.  I yearned for a fuller, wider life, for larger knowledge.  I hungered