'Behind that ugliness and dirt I see the Christ,' I retorted. 'I certainly did not see Him in the Church Parade.'
'Have you gone on the religious lay now?' he asked, with a burst of his bluff laughter.
'No, but I'm going,' I said, and turned back.
I stood, pretending to watch the gay parasols, but furtively studying my Jew. Yes, in that odd figure, so strangely seated on the pavement, I had chanced on the very features, the haunting sadness and mystery of which I had been so long in quest. I wondered at the simplicity with which he was able to maintain a pose so essentially undignified. I told myself I beheld the East squatted broodingly as on a divan, while the West paraded with parasol and Prayer-Book. I wondered that the beadles were unobservant of him. Were they content with his abstention from the holy ground of the Church Parade, and the less sacred seats on the promenade without, or would they, if their eyes drew towards him, move him on from further profaning those frigidly respectable windows and stuccoed portals?
At last I said: 'Good-morning.' And he rose hurriedly and began to move away uncomplainingly, as one used to being hounded from everywhere.
'Guten Morgen,' I said in German, with a happy inspiration, for in my futile search in London I had found that a corrupt German called Yiddish usually proved a means of communication.
He paused, as if reassured. 'Gut' Morgen,' he murmured; and then I saw that his stature was kingly, like that of the sons of Anak, and his manner a strange blend of majesty and humility.
'Pardon me,' I went on, in my scrupulously worst German, 'may I ask you a question?'
He made a curious movement of acquiescence, compounded of a shrug and a slight uplifting of his palms.
'Are you in need of work?'