"Wolffert! Come in here a moment. I want to speak to you alone."
He re-entered and closed the door; standing stiff and silent.
"Wolffert, there has been some mistake, and I want to know what it is." He made not the least sign that he heard, except a flash, deep in his eyes, like a streak of lightning in a far-off cloud.
"I am ready to fight you in any way you wish," I went on. "But I want to know what the trouble is. Why did you insult me out of a clear sky? What had I done?"
"Everything."
"What! Specify. What was it?"
"You have made my life Hell—all of you!" His face worked, and he made a wild sweep with his arm and brought it back to his side with clenched fist.
"But I?"
"You were the head. You have all done it. You have treated me as an outcast—a Jew! You have given me credit for nothing, because I was a Jew. I could have stood the personal contempt and insult, and I have tried to stand it; but I will put up with it no longer. It is appointed once for a man to die, and I can die in no better cause than for my people."
He was gasping with suppressed emotion, and I was beginning to gasp also—but for a different reason. He went on: