"Oh," said Mrs. Goldsmith, doubtfully, for she could not quite think Raphael had become infected by his cousin's propensity for paradox. "Do you think George Eliot and Lessing didn't understand the Jewish character?" "They are the only writers who have ever understood it," affirmed Miss Cissy Levine, emphatically. A little scornful smile played for a second about the mouth of the dark little girl. "Stop a moment," said Sidney. "I've been so busy doing justice to this delicious asparagus, that I have allowed Raphael to imagine nobody here has read _Mordecai Josephs_. I have, and I say there is more actuality in it than in _Daniel Deronda_ and _Nathan der Weise_ put together. It is a crude production, all the same; the writer's artistic gift seems handicapped by a dead-weight of moral platitudes and highfalutin, and even mysticism. He not only presents his characters but moralizes over them--actually cares whether they are good or bad, and has yearnings after the indefinable--it is all very young. Instead of being satisfied that Judaea gives him characters that are interesting, he actually laments their lack of culture. Still, what he has done is good enough to make one hope his artistic instinct will shake off his moral." "Oh, Sidney, what are you saying?" murmured Addie. "It's all right, little girl. You don't understand Greek." "It's not Greek," put in Raphael. "In Greek art, beauty of soul and beauty of form are one. It's French you are talking, though the ignorant _ateliers_ where you picked it up flatter themselves it's Greek." "It's Greek to Addie, anyhow," laughed Sidney. "But that's what makes the anti-Semitic chapters so unsatisfactory." "We all felt their unsatisfactoriness, if we could not analyze it so cleverly," said the hostess. "We all felt it," said Mrs. Montagu Samuels. "Yes, that's it," said Sidney, blandly. "I could have forgiven the rose-color of the picture if it had been more artistically painted." "Rose-color!" gasped Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, "rose-color, indeed!" Not even Sidney's authority could persuade the table into that.