They were now in the outskirts of the town, among the wide and ill-paved streets where tall houses are springing up on the site of the huts once occupied by the Jews who are now quartered in the neighborhood of the Nowiniarska market-place.  For the chosen people must needs live near a market-place, and within hearing of the chink of small coin.  In the cities of eastern Europe that have a Jews’ quarter there is a barrier erected between the daily lives of the two races, though no more than a narrow street may in reality divide them.  Different interests, different hopes, aspirations, and desires are to be found within a few yards, and neighbors are as far apart as if a frontier line or the curse of Babel stood between them.

Cartoner and Deulin, riding through the Jewish quarter, were as safe from recognition as if they were in a country lane at Wilanow; for the men hurrying along the pavements were wrapped each in his own keen thought of gain, and if they glanced up at the horsemen at all, merely looked in order to appraise the value of their clothes and saddles—­as if there were nothing beyond.  For them, it would seem there is no beyond; nothing but the dumb waiting for the removal of that curse which has lasted nineteen hundred years, and instead of wearing itself out, seems to gain in strength as the world grows older.

“We will go by the back ways,” said Cartoner, “and need never see any of our world in Warsaw at all.”

The streets were crowded by men, for the women live an in-door life in an atmosphere that seems to bleach and fatten.  The roads were little used for wheel traffic; for the commerce by which these people live is of so retail a nature that it seems to pass from hand to hand in mysterious cloth bundles and black stuff bags.  The two horsemen were obliged to go slowly through the groups, who never raised their heads, or seemed to speak above a whisper.

“What do they talk of—­what do they think—­all day?” said Cartoner.  And, indeed, the quiet of the streets had a suggestion of surreptitiousness.  Even the children are sad, and stand about in melancholy solitude.

“I would sooner be a dog,” answered Deulin, with a shake of the shoulders, as if Care had climbed into the saddle behind him.  “Sooner a dog.”

By these ways they reached the station, and there found a messenger to take the horses to their stable.  All through the streets they had passed men in one uniform or another, who looked stout and well-fed, who strode in the middle of the pavement, while the Poles, whose clothes were poor and threadbare, shuffled aside in their patched and shambling boots to make way for the conqueror.  Sometimes they would turn and look back at some sword-bearer who was more offensive than usual, with reflective eyes as if marking him in order to know him at a future time.  As is always the case, it was the smaller officials who were the most offensive—­the little Jacks-in-office