'Now I must ask you to go,' she said.
'All right—don't flurry yourself!' he said savagely. 'You don't impress me with your airs. Try them on people who don't know what you were—a Schnorrer's daughter! Yes, your father was always a Schnorrer, and you are his child. It's in the blood. Ha! ha! ha! Moses Ansell's daughter! Moses Ansell's daughter—a pedlar, who went about the country with brass jewellery and stood in the Lane with lemons, and schnorred half-crowns of my father! You took jolly good care to ship him off to America, but 'pon my honour! you can't expect others to forget him as quickly as you. It's a rich joke, you refusing me! You're not fit for me to wipe my shoes on. My mother never cared for me to go to your garret; she said I must mix with my equals, and goodness knew what disease I might pick up in the dirt. 'Pon my honour the old girl was right.'
'She was right!' Esther was stung into retorting. 'You must mix only with your equals. Please leave the room now, or else I shall.'
His face changed. His frenzy gave way to a momentary shock of consternation as he realised what he had done.
'No, no, Esther! I was mad; I didn't know what I was saying. I didn't mean it. Forget it.'
'I cannot. It was quite true,' she said bitterly. 'I am only a Schnorrer's daughter. Well, are you going, or must I?'
He muttered something inarticulate, then seized his hat sulkily, and went to the door without looking at her.
'You have forgotten something,' she said.
He turned; her forefinger pointed to the bouquet on the table. He had a fresh access of rage at the sight of it, jerked it contemptuously to the floor with a sweep of his hat, and stamped upon it. Then he rushed from the room and an instant after she heard the hall-door slam.
She sank against the table, sobbing nervously. It was her first proposal. A Schnorrer, and the daughter of a Schnorrer! Yes, that was what she was. And she had even repaid her benefactors with deception. What hopes could she yet cherish? In literature she was a failure; the critics gave her few gleams of encouragement, while all her acquaintances, from Raphael downwards, would turn and rend her, should she dare declare herself. Nay, she was ashamed of herself for the mischief she had wrought. No one in the world cared for her; she was quite alone. The only man in whose breast she could excite love or the semblance of it was a contemptible cad. And who was she that she should venture to hope for love? She figured herself as an item in a catalogue—'A little, ugly, low-spirited, absolutely penniless young woman, subject to nervous headaches.' Her sobs were interrupted by a ghastly burst of self-mockery. Yes, Levi was right! She ought to think herself lucky to get him. Again, she asked herself, what had existence to offer her? Gradually her sobs ceased; she remembered to-night would be Seder night, and her thoughts, so violently turned Ghetto-wards, went back to that night, soon after poor Benjamin's death, when she sat before the garret-fire striving to picture the larger life of the Future.