'Oh, they are all well and happy. Solomon has a store in Detroit. He is only nineteen, and dreadfully enterprising. Father is a pillar of a Chicago Chevrah. He still talks Yiddish. He has escaped learning American just as he escaped learning English. I buy him a queer old Hebrew book sometimes with my pocket-money, and he is happy. One little sister is a typewriter, and the other is just out of school and does the house-work. I suppose I shall go out and see them all some day.'

'What became of the grandmother you mentioned?'

'She had a charity funeral a year before the miracle happened. She was very weak and ill, and the charity doctor warned her that she must not fast on the day of Atonement. But she wouldn't even moisten her parched lips with a drop of cold water. And so she died, exhorting my father with her last breath to beware of Mrs. Simons (a good-hearted widow who was very kind to us) and to marry a pious Polish woman.'

'And did he?'

'No, I am still stepmotherless. Your white tie's gone wrong. It's all on one side.'

'It generally is,' said Raphael, fumbling perfunctorily at the little bow.

'Let me put it straight. There! And now you know all about me, I hope you are going to repay my confidences in kind.'

'I am afraid I cannot oblige with anything so romantic,' he said, smiling. 'I was born of rich but honest parents, of a family settled in England for three generations, and went to Harrow and Oxford in due course. That is all. I saw a little of the Ghetto, though, when I was a boy. I had some correspondence on Hebrew literature with a great Jewish scholar, Gabriel Hamburg (he lives in Stockholm now), and one day when I was up from Harrow I went to see him. By good fortune I assisted at the foundation of the Holy Land League, now presided over by Gideon, the Member for Whitechapel. I was moved to tears by the enthusiasm. It was there I made the acquaintance of Strelitski. He spoke as if inspired. I also met a poverty-stricken poet, Melchitzedek Pinchas, who afterwards sent me his work, Metatoron's Flames, to Harrow. A real neglected genius. Now, there's the man to bear in mind when one speaks of Jews and poetry! After that night I kept up a regular intercourse with the Ghetto, and have been there several times lately.'

'But surely you don't also long to return to Palestine?'

'I do. Why should we not have our own country?'