Reb Monash had felt hitherto that the child of his dreams, such a child as would have been a living glory in Terkass, was almost of too exquisite a lineament for the reality of this godless England. But Mottele had undeceived him, for here in the very flesh was a child actually born in England and yet recalling irresistibly the piety of his own boyhood in Russia; a child such as he had been himself, at ten years an intimate of greybeards and an object of almost superstitious affection and reverence among the old women of the Synagogue. He would not confess it to himself, yet there seemed an element of injustice in the fact that he, Reb Monash, to whom surely, on the grounds of his own holiness and the uninterrupted holiness of his ancestry generation behind generation, such a son as Mottele was due, that he should be the father of so unsatisfactory a child as Philip. There was much he loved in Philip. Because of the very strength of his love for Philip, he assured himself, he grieved so much to find Philip so far from his heart's desire. It was as much a matter of the happiness of Philip's own soul as of the happiness and credit of himself. But, he realized, to display to Philip or to Philip's mother, how deep was his love for his son, would be tantamount to an offence against God. It would sanction the delusion that he accepted Philip such as he was, whereas the Philip he strove after was far less like Philip than like himself or Mottele, after which image, with God's grace, he would yet convert his son. For there was much, he repeated, he loved in Philip; as for instance his poetry, his imagination, which, wedded to Jewishness, the spiritual state called _Yidishkeit_, were a valuable possession, as he, in his oratory, himself frequently realized. On the other hand, the quality of poetry, unhealthily developed, might nourish errors concerning the primal verity of _Yidishkeit_ which might land him into the pits of the unclean. There was a certain quality of the _rational_ which up to a certain limit was likewise a decoration. It was a quality which could excellently elucidate a parable or examine an obscure text with the possible result of throwing upon it a naive and modern light very entertaining to the elders at the Synagogue; but again, like all Philip's positive qualities, it had a negative aspect of the greatest spiritual danger. It was a God-sent bounty that had sent Mottele in his way--Mottele, who had imagination, but not to excess, who was rational, but not unhealthily. By placing the virtues of Mottele in a clear light before Philip, by the spectacle of the affection and esteem which Mottele commanded in the exercise of these virtues, both in _chayder_ and in _shool_, the increasing contumacy he had observed with alarm in Philip would be broken down, and a son worthy of the traditions of Reb Monash adorn his home.