On a neighboring street, a few minutes later, down a flight of steep wooden stairs they descended into a little cafe, shaped like a tunnel, the ceiling low, the bare walls soiled by rubbing elbows, dirty hands, the air blue and hot with smoke.  Young men and girls packed in at small tables bent over tall glasses of Russian tea, and gesturing with their cigarettes declaimed and argued excitedly.  Quick joyous cries of greeting met Isadore from every side.

“You see?” he said gaily.  “This is my club.  Here we are like a family.”  He ordered tea of a waiter who seemed more like a bosom friend.  And leaning eagerly forward, he began to speak in glowing terms of the men and girls from sweatshops who spent their nights in these feasts of the soul, talking, listening, grappling, “for the power to think with minds as clear as the sun when it rises,” he ardently cried.  “There is not a night in this city, not one, when hundreds do not talk like this until the breaking of the day!  And then they sleep!  A little joke!  For at six o’clock they must rise to their work!  And that is a force,” he added, “not only for those people but a force for you and me.  Do you see?  When you feel tired, when all your hopes are sinking low, you think of those people and you say, ’I will go to their places.’  And you go.  You listen and you watch their faces, and such fire makes you burn!  You go home, you are happy, you have a new life!

“And perhaps at last you will have a religion,” he continued, in fervent tones.  “You see, with us Jews—­and with Christians, too—­the old religion, it is gone.  And in its place there is nothing strong.  And so the young people go all to pieces.  They dance and they drink.  If you go to those dance halls you say, ‘They are crazy!’ For dancing alone is not enough.  And you say, ‘These people must have a religion.’  You ask, ’Where can I find a new God?’ And you reply, ‘There is no God.’  And then you must be very sad.  You know how it is?  You feel too free.  And you feel scared and lonely.  You look up at the stars.  There are millions.  You are only a speck of dust—­on one.

“But then you come to my library.  And you see those hungry people—­more hungry than men have ever been.  And you see those books upon the shelves.  And you know when they come together at last, when that power to think as clear as the sun comes into the souls of those people so hungry, then we shall have a new god for the world.  For there is no end to what they shall do,” Isadore ended huskily.

Roger felt a lump in his throat.  He glanced into his daughter’s eyes and saw a suspicious brightness there.  Isadore looked at her happily.

“You see?” he said to Roger.  “When she came here to-night she was tired, half sick.  But now she is all filled with life!”

* * * * *

Later, on the street outside when Isadore had left them, Deborah turned to her father: