“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; probably the man was sincerely indignant at certain aspects.  I am ready to allow he did not even see he was one-sided.  But if you see it, why not show the world the other side of the shield?”

She put her hand wearily to her brow.

“Do not ask me,” she said.  “To have my work appreciated merely because the moral tickled the reader’s vanity would be a mockery.  The suffrages of the Jewish public—­I might have valued them once; now I despise them.”  She sank further back on the chair, pale and silent.

“Why, what harm have they done you?” he asked.

“They are so stupid,” she said, with a gesture of distaste.

“That is a new charge against the Jews.”

“Look at the way they have denounced this Armitage, saying his book is vulgar and wretched and written for gain, and all because it does not flatter them.”

“Can you wonder at it?  To say ‘you’re another’ may not be criticism, but it is human nature.”

Esther smiled sadly.  “I cannot make you out at all,” she said.

“Why?  What is there strange about me?”

“You say such shrewd, humorous things sometimes; I wonder how you can remain orthodox.”

“Now I can’t understand you,” he said, puzzled.

“Oh well.  Perhaps if you could, you wouldn’t be orthodox.  Let us remain mutual enigmas.  And will you do me a favor?”