Not that Barstein expected anything but the music of the Wedding March. He was glad that his original contempt for Sir Asher had been exchanged for sincere respect, and that the bluff Briton was a mere veneer. It was to the Palestinian patriarch that he would pour out his hopes and his dreams.
Alas! he found only the bluff Briton, and a Briton no longer genially, but bluntly, bluff.
'It is perfectly impossible.'
Barstein, bewildered, pleaded for enlightenment. Was he not pious enough, or not rich enough, too artistic or too low-born? Or did Sir Asher consider his past life improper or his future behaviour dubious? Let Sir Asher say.
But Sir Asher would not say. 'I am not bound to give my reasons. We are all proud of your work—it confers honour on our community. The Mayor alluded to it only yesterday.' He spoke in his best platform manner. 'But to receive you into my family—that is another matter.'
And all the talk advanced things no further.
'It would be an entirely unsuitable match.' Sir Asher caressed his long beard with an air of finality.
With a lover's impatience, Barstein had made the mistake of seeking Sir Asher in his counting-house, where the municipal magnate sat among his solidities. The mahogany furniture, the iron safes, the ledgers, the silent obsequious clerks and attendants through whom Barstein had had to penetrate, the factory buildings stretching around, with their sense of throbbing machinery and disciplined workers, all gave the burly Briton a background against which visions and emotions seemed as unreal as ghosts under gaslight. The artist felt all this solid life closing round him like the walls of a torture-chamber, squeezing out his confidence, his aspirations, his very life.
'Then you prefer to break your daughter's heart!' he cried desperately.
'Break my daughter's heart!' echoed Sir Asher in amaze. It was apparently a new aspect to him.