“It isn’t true. All I want is that they should become Russians, cultured Russians.”
“Well, as for me there is only one question—the question of plain common justice and plain elementary liberty. When this has been achieved there won’t be any such thing as a Jewish, Polish or Hottentot question. Yes, those ‘scamps’ are the only real friends the Jews have.”
“But one cannot live on the golden mist of that glorious future of yours, Clara. It takes a saint to do that. Every-day mortals cannot help thinking of equal rights before the law in the sordid present.”
“Think away! Much good will it do the Jews. The only kind of equal rights possible to-day is for Jew and Gentile to die on the same gallows for liberty. That’s the ‘scamps’’ view of it.” At this the word struck her in conjunction with the images of Boulatoff, Olga, the judge, and the other members of the Circle, whereupon she burst out, with a stifled sob in her voice: “How dare you abuse those people?”
Not only had she broken loose from his tutelage, but he had found himself on the defensive. They had changed rôles. The pugnacious tone of conviction, almost of inspiration, with which she parried his jibes nonplussed him. Usually a bright talker, he was now colourless and floundering. And the more he tried to work himself back to his old-time mastery the more helplessly at a disadvantage he appeared.
“I don’t recognise you, Clara,” he said. “They have mesmerised you, those phrase-makers.”
She leaped to her feet. “I don’t intend to hear any more of this abuse,” she said. “And the idea of you finding fault with phrase-makers! you of all men, you to whom a well-turned phrase is dearer than all else in the world! If they make phrases they are willing to suffer for them at least.”
“Oh well, they have made a perfect savage of you,” he retorted under his breath. “Good night.”
She was left with a sharp twinge of compunction, but she had barely dived under the wicket chain when her thoughts reverted to Boulatoff and what he had said to her.