She shook her head. 'There's the Rev. Joseph Strelitski. I suppose he does, but then he's paid for it.'
'Oh, why will you sneer at Strelitski?' he said, pained. 'He has a noble soul. It is to the privilege of his conversation that I owe my best understanding of Judaism.'
'Ah, I was wondering why the old arguments sounded so different, so much more convincing from your lips,' murmured Esther. 'Now I know: because he wears a white tie. That sets up all my bristles of contradiction when he opens his mouth.'
'But I wear a white tie, too,' said Raphael, his smile broadening in sympathy with the slow response on the girl's serious face.
'That's not a trade-mark,' she protested. 'But forgive me, I didn't know Strelitski was a friend of yours. I won't say a word against him any more. His sermons really are above the average, and he strives more than the others to make Judaism more spiritual.'
'More spiritual!' he repeated, the pained expression returning. 'Why, the very theory of Judaism has always been the spiritualisation of the material.'
'And the practice of Judaism has always been the materialisation of the spiritual,' she answered.
He pondered the saying thoughtfully, his face growing sadder.
'You have lived among your books,' Esther went on. 'I have lived among the brutal facts. I was born in the Ghetto, and when you talk of the mission of Israel, silent sardonic laughter goes through me as I think of the squalor and the misery.'
'God works through human sufferings. His ways are large,' said Raphael, almost in a whisper.