"Yes," I said, "You knew me at once and I knew you. We show up, don't we, under the apple-blossom and this sky. It doesn't belong to us, do you wish it did?"
"Ah," he said seriously, "that's the question. Or rather we don't belong to it. We belong to Palestine still, but I'm not sure that it doesn't belong to us for all that."
"Well, perhaps your version is truer than mine. I'll take it, but there's still the question, do you wish you belonged to it?"
He wasn't a bit offended. He tilted back his chair, put one thumb in the arm-hole of his waistcoat, and looked round the garden. He showed abominably concentrated, floridly intelligent, in the thin spring air and among the inconspicuous tea-drinkers. He didn't answer my question; he was thinking, and when he spoke, he asked another:
"Do you ever go to Synagogue?"
"No."
"Nor do I, except on Yom Kippur. I still go then every year—pure habit. I don't believe in it, of course; I believe in nothing—you believe in nothing—we're all sceptics. And yet we belong to Palestine still. Funny, ain't it? How it comes out! Under the apple-blossom and blue sky, as you say, as well as—as—among the tombs."
"Among the tombs?"
"Ah, I was thinking of another man I met. He belongs to Palestine too. Shall I tell you about him?"
I said I wished he would. He put his hand's in his pockets and began at once.