“Well, pardon me, then. You have my best wishes, Clara. I say it from my heart. I shall be your warmest friend as long as I live. I confess I dreamed of your joining our party, so that I might be near you, and hoped that some day you would become mine.”
“The right place for a revolutionist is here, in Russia, Elkin.”
“Nobody is going to try to persuade you to leave the movement,” he said, levelling a meek, longing look at her. “The Russian people act like wild beasts toward our poor Jews, Clara; yet they and the Russian revolution will ever be dear to our hearts. We appreciate that it is their blindness which makes such brutes of them. We shall always think of those who are in the fight here; we shall adore you; we shall worship you, Clara; and perhaps, too, we shall be able to do something for Russian liberty from there. But if you condemn us for joining the emigrants, I wish to say this, that if you had been in Miroslav during the riot you would perhaps take a more indulgent view of our step. So many Jewish revolutionists have sacrificed their lives by ‘going to the people’—to the Russian people. It’s about time some of us at least went to our own people. They need us, Clara.”
“Look here, Elkin,” she said with ardent emphasis, striving to deaden the consciousness of his love-lorn look that was breaking her heart, “you must not think I am so soulless as to take no interest in the victims of those horrors, for I do. I do. I can assure you I do. I have been continually discussing this question in my mind. I have studied it. My heart is bleeding for our poor Jews, but even if it were solely a question of saving the Jews, even then one’s duty would be to work for the revolution. How many Russian Jews could you transport to America and Palestine? Surely not all the five million there are. The great majority of them will stay here and be baited, and the only hope of these is a liberated Russia. All history tells us that the salvation of the Jews lies in liberty and in liberty only. England was the first country to grant them the right to breathe because she was the first country where the common people wrested rights for themselves. The French revolution emancipated the Jews, and so it goes. If there were no parliamentary governments in Western Europe, the Jews of Germany, Austria, or Belgium would still be treated as they are in Russia. When Russia has some freedom at least, her Jews, too, will be treated like human beings.”
“But we are not like the Palestinians, Clara. We don’t propose to estrange ourselves from the revolutionary movement. We shall support it with American money, and we hope to fit out expeditions to rescue important prisoners from Siberia, and to take them across the Pacific Ocean to our commune.”
“Dreams!” she said, laughing good-naturedly.
The discussion lasted about an hour longer. He had not the strength to get up, and she had not the heart to cut him short. They listened to each other’s arguments with rapt attention, yet they were both aware of the unspoken other discussion—on the pathos of his love—that went on between them all the while they talked of the great exodus.
And while she commiserated Elkin and felt flattered by her power over him, her heart was full of yearning tenderness for her husband, of joy in him and in her honeymoon with him.
When Elkin rose from his seat at last he said:
“By the way, I came near forgetting it—your cousin wants to see you.”