‘I did not mean that I care for nothing but my friend’s aches and pains, but that I do not care for what he just takes up and takes on.’ ‘It is my misfortune that my subjects are not very—I was about to say—human. Perhaps it is because I am a Jew.’ ‘I do not know quite what you mean by your “subjects,” but if you mean philosophy and religion, they are human.’ ‘If they are, very few people like to hear anything about them. Do you know, Miss Hopgood, I can never talk to anybody as I can to you.’ Clara made no reply. A husband was to be had for a look, for a touch, a husband whom she could love, a husband who could give her all her intellect demanded. A little house rose before her eyes as if by Arabian enchantment; there was a bright fire on the hearth, and there were children round it; without the look, the touch, there would be solitude, silence and a childless old age, so much more to be feared by a woman than by a man. Baruch paused, waiting for her answer, and her tongue actually began to move with a reply, which would have sent his arm round her, and made them one for ever, but it did not come. Something fell and flashed before her like lightning from a cloud overhead, divinely beautiful, but divinely terrible. ‘I remember,’ she said, ‘that I have to call in Lamb’s Conduit Street to buy something for my sister. I shall just be in time.’ Baruch went as far as Lamb’s Conduit Street with her. He, too, would have determined his own destiny if she had uttered the word, but the power to proceed without it was wanting and he fell back. He left her at the door of the shop. She bid him good-bye, obviously intending that he should go no further with her, and he shook hands with her, taking her hand again and shaking it again with a grasp which she knew well enough was too fervent for mere friendship. He then wandered back once more to his old room at Clerkenwell. The fire was dead, he stirred it, the cinders fell through the grate and it dropped out all together. He made no attempt to rekindle it, but sat staring at the black ashes, not thinking, but dreaming. Thirty years more perhaps with no change! The last chance that he could begin a new life had disappeared. He cursed himself that nothing drove him out of himself with Marshall and his fellowmen; that he was not Chartist nor revolutionary; but it was impossible to create in himself enthusiasm for a cause. He had tried before to become a patriot and had failed, and was conscious, during the trial, that he was pretending to be something he was not and could not be. There was nothing to be done but to pace the straight road in front of him, which led nowhere, so far as he could see. CHAPTER XXVIII A MONTH afterwards Marshall announced that he intended to pay a visit. ‘I am going,’ he said, ‘to see Mazzini. Who will go with me?’ Clara and Madge were both eager to accompany him. Mrs Caffyn and Mrs Marshall chose to stay at home.