'Surely you can write to her publishers?'
And the door closed upon the Russian dreamer, leaving the practical Englishman dumfounded at his never having thought of this simple expedient. But before he could adopt it the door was thrown open again by Pinchas, who had got out of the habit of knocking through Raphael being too polite to reprimand him. The poet tottered in, dropped wearily into a chair, and buried his face in his hands, letting an extinct cigar-stump slip through his fingers on to the literature that carpeted the floor.
'What is the matter?' inquired Raphael in alarm.
'I am miserable—vairy miserable.'
'Has anything happened?'
'Nothing. But I have been thinking vat have I come to after all these years, all these vanderings? Nothing! Vat vill be my end? Oh, I am so unhappy.'
'But you are better off than you ever were in your life. You no longer live amid the squalor of the Ghetto; you are clean and well dressed; you yourself admit that you can afford to give charity now. That looks as if you'd come to something—not nothing.'
'Yes,' said the poet, looking up eagerly, 'and I am famous through the world. Metatoron's Flames vill shine eternally.' His head drooped again. 'I have all I vant, and you are the best man in the vorld. But I am the most miserable.'
'Nonsense! cheer up,' said Raphael.
'I can never cheer up any more. I vill shoot myself. I have realised the emptiness of life. Fame, money, love—all is Dead Sea Fruit.'