“Yes, isn’t it?” said little Sampson.  “If he had died yesterday, I shouldn’t have minded it so much, while to-morrow would have given us a clear week.  He hasn’t even been ill,” he grumbled.  “I’ve had to send Pinchas to the Museum in a deuce of a hurry, to find out about his early life.  I’m awfully upset about it, and what makes it worse is a telegram from Goldsmith, ordering a page obituary at least with black rules, besides a leader.  It’s simply sickening.  The proofs are awful enough as it is—­my blessed editor has been writing four columns of his autobiography in his most original English, and he wants to leave out all the news part to make room for ’em.  In one way Gideon’s death is a boon; even Pinchas’ll see his stuff must be crowded out.  It’s frightful having to edit your editor.  Why wasn’t he made sub?”

“That would have been just as trying for you,” said Raphael with a melancholy smile.  He took up a galley-proof and began to correct it.  To his surprise he came upon his own paragraph about Strelitski’s resignation:  it caused him fresh emotion.  This great spiritual crisis had quite slipped his memory, so egoistic are the best of us at times.  “Please be careful that Pinchas’s autobiography does not crowd that out,” he said.

Pinchas arrived late, when little Sampson was almost in despair.  “It is all right.” he shouted, waving a roll of manuscript.  “I have him from the cradle—­the stupid stockbroker, the Man-of-the-Earth, who sent me back my poesie, and vould not let me teach his boy Judaism.  And vhile I had the inspiration I wrote the leader also in the Museum—­it is here—­oh, vairy beautiful!  Listen to the first sentence.  ’The Angel of Death has passed again over Judaea; he has flown off vith our visest and our best, but the black shadow of his ving vill long rest upon the House of Israel.’  And the end is vordy of the beginning.  He is dead:  but he lives for ever enshrined in the noble tribute to his genius in Metatoron’s Flames.”

Little Sampson seized the “copy” and darted with it to the composing-room, where Raphael was busy giving directions.  By his joyful face Raphael saw the crisis was over.  Little Sampson handed the manuscript to the foreman, then drawing a deep breath of relief, he began to hum a sprightly march.

“I say, you’re a nice chap!” he grumbled, cutting himself short with a staccato that was not in the music.

“What have I done?” asked Raphael.

“Done?  You’ve got me into a nice mess.  The guvnor—­the new guvnor, the old guvnor, it seems—­called the other day to fix things with me and Pinchas.  He asked me if I was satisfied to go on at the same screw.  I said he might make it two pound ten.  ‘What, more than double?’ says he.  ‘No, only nine shillings extra,’ says I, ’and for that I’ll throw in some foreign telegrams the late editor never cared for.’  And then it came out that he only knew of a sovereign, and fancied I was trying it on.”