'Manicuring,' she repeated smilingly. 'And you ask me if it is humiliating to wait upon an artistic sea-sick lady!'
'Artistic!' he sneered. His heart was full of pity and indignation.
'As surely as sea-sick!' she rejoined laughingly. 'Why are you prejudiced against her?'
He flushed. 'Prej-prejudiced?' he stammered. 'Why should I be prejudiced? From all I hear it's she that's prejudiced. It's a wonder she took a Jewess into her service.'
'Where's the wonder? Don't the Southerners have negro servants?' she asked quietly.
His flush deepened. 'You compare Jews to negroes!'
'I apologize to the negroes. The blacks have at least Liberia. There is a black President, a black Parliament. We have nothing, nothing!'
'We!' Again that ambiguous plural. But he still instinctively evaded co-classification.
'Nothing?' he retorted. 'I should have said everything. Every gift of genius that Nature can shower from her cornucopia.'
'Jewish geniuses!' Her voice had a stinging inflection. 'Don't talk to me of our geniuses; it is they that have betrayed us. Every other people has its great men; but our great men—they belong to every other people. The world absorbs our sap, and damns us for our putrid remains. Our best must pipe alien tunes and dance to the measures of the heathen. They build and paint; they write and legislate. But never a song of Israel do they fashion, nor a picture of Israel, nor a law of Israel, nor a temple of Israel. Bah! What are they but hirelings?'