'Surely you are a Party!'
'I tell you no. I want all Parties.'
'I am sorry. But I'm too busy just now to consider anything else. Our Party-Day falls next week, and there's infinite work to be done.'
'Work!' cried David desperately. 'What work?'
'There will be many great speeches. I myself shall not speak beyond an hour, but that is merely impromptu in the debate. Our Referat-speakers need at least two hours apiece. We did not get through our last session till five in the morning. And there were scenes, I tell you!'
'But what is there to discuss?'
'What is there to discuss?' The Sejmist looked pityingly at David. 'The great question of the Duma elections, for one thing. To boycott or not to boycott. And if not, which candidates shall we support? Then there is the question of Jewish autonomy in the Russian Parliament—that is our great principle. Moreover, as a comparatively new Party, we have yet to thresh out our relations to all the existing Parties. With which shall we form blocs in the elections? While most are dangerous to the best interests of the Jewish people and opposed to the evolution of historic necessity, with some we may be able to co-operate here and there, where our work intersects.'
'What work?' David insisted again.
'Doesn't our name tell you? We are the Vozrozhdenie—the Resurrectionists—our work is an unconditional historic necessity springing from the evolution of——!'
The door of the inn arrested the Sejmist's harangue. As he pushed it open, a babel of other voices made continuance impossible. The noise came entirely from a party of four, huddled in a cloud of cigarette-smoke near the stove. In one of the four David recognised the tea-merchant of the morning, but the tea-merchant seemed to have no recollection of David. He was still expatiating upon the Individuality of Israel, which, it appeared, was an essence independent of place and time. He nodded, however, to the young Sejmist, observing ironically: