'Strelitski isn't married, is he?' asked Sidney.
'No,' said Mr. Goldsmith; 'not yet. The congregation expect him to, though. I don't care to give him the hint myself, he is a little queer sometimes.'
'He owes it to his position,' said Miss Cissy Levine.
'That is what we think,' said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, with the majestic manner that suited her opulent beauty.
'I wish we had him in our synagogue,' said Raphael. 'Michaels is a well-meaning, worthy man, but he is dreadfully dull.'
'Poor Raphael!' said Sidney. 'Why did you abolish the old style of minister who had to slaughter the sheep? Now the minister reserves all his powers of destruction for his own flock.'
'I have given him endless hints to preach only once a month,' said Mr. Montagu Samuels dolefully. 'But every Saturday our hearts sink as we see him walk to the pulpit.'
'You see, Addie, how a sense of duty makes a man criminal,' said Sidney. 'Isn't Michaels the minister who defends orthodoxy in a way that makes the orthodox rage over his unconscious heresies, while the heterodox enjoy themselves by looking out for his historical and grammatical blunders?'
'Poor man! he works hard,' said Raphael gently. 'Let him be.'
Over the dessert the conversation turned by way of the Rev. Strelitski's marriage to the growing willingness of the younger generation to marry out of Judaism. The table discerned in intermarriage the beginning of the end.