'Oh yes! do,' she pleaded. 'Or else I shall think you're angry with me for not asking you before.' And she rang the bell.
She discovered, to her amusement, that Raphael took two pieces of sugar per cup, but that, if they were not inserted, he did not notice their absence. Over tea, too, Raphael had a new idea, this time fraught with peril to the Sèvres teapot.
'Why couldn't you write us a Jewish serial story?' he said suddenly. 'That would be a novelty in communal journalism.'
Esther looked startled by the proposition.
'How do you know I could?' she said after a silence.
'I don't know,' he replied. 'Only I fancy you could. Why not?' he said encouragingly. 'You don't know what you can do till you try. Besides, you write poetry.'
'The Jewish public doesn't like the looking-glass,' she answered him, shaking her head.
'Oh, you can't say that! They've only objected as yet to the distorting-mirror. You're thinking of the row over that man Armitage's book. Now, why not write an antidote to that book? There now, there's an idea for you!'
'It is an idea,' said Esther, with overt sarcasm. 'You think art can be degraded into an antidote.'
'Art is not a fetish,' he urged. 'What degradation is there in art teaching a noble lesson?'