“Yes.”
“I am sorry.” He spread his hands deprecatingly. “But you see it is not my fault that you happened to marry a Jew. You know I have no love for that race.”
“I do know, to my sorrow,” she answered quietly. “But I cannot understand it at all. Mr. Moore, why are you an anti-Semite?”
The question was given with such direct simplicity that for a moment he was at a loss for a reply. This was carrying the war into the enemy’s country.
“Why am I an anti-Semite?” he repeated, with hesitation. “Well, that is too large a matter to be entered into now. My motives are both political and personal; but they can be summed up in one sentence: I hate the Jews.”
“And yet you call yourself a Christian!” she said, with contempt.
His cheeks flushed. “Lady Patricia!” he exclaimed, half angrily; but she was undismayed.
“You do call yourself a Christian,” she continued calmly. “You are publicly known as one of the staunchest of churchmen, and you are president of several church societies. Mr. Moore, did Christ hate the Jews?”
There was silence, but she scarcely waited for a response. “You know He did not,” she went on quickly. “He healed them of their diseases, toiled for them, suffered for them, died for them, loved them to the end. To be at the same time a Christian and an anti-Semite is absolutely impossible. More: if England is anti-Semitic, she cannot be Christian, and (I quote from one of your own speeches now)—the day England ceases to be Christian she ceases to be great. Oh, cannot you see the inconsistency of your position? How could you reconcile it with your conscience to persecute the Jews?”
She raised her sweet face in passionate appeal. The words seemed to come direct from her heart, and her ardour expressed itself in the depths of her blue eyes. Moore stared at her with unconcealed astonishment. No one—not even his friend Lawson Holmes—had dared to be so outspoken; but this gentle girl evidently was not afraid. And her words struck home: they pierced the outer shield of his obstinacy, and penetrated to the true self within; they touched the inmost chords of his troubled emotions, and set them quivering like the strings of a lyre. Yet he displayed no resentment, rather was he abashed: for his usual flow of language deserted him; he could, for once, find no counter-reply.