The P.Z. glared. 'Palestine is an unconditional historic necessity. The attempt to form a Jewish State elsewhere can only result in failure and disappointment. Do you not see how the folk-instinct leads them to Palestine? No less than four thousand have gone there this year.' 'And a hundred and fifty thousand to America. How about that folk-instinct?' 'Oh, these are the mere bourgeois. I see you are an Americanist Assimilator.' 'I am no more an A.A. than I am a Z.Z.,' said David tartly, adding with a smile, 'if there is such a thing as a Z.Z.' 'Would to Heaven there were not!' said Lerkoff fervently. 'It is these miserable Zioni-Zionists, with their incapacity for political concepts, who----' Milovka, amid all its medievalism, possessed a few incongruous telephones, and one of these now started ringing violently in Dr. Lerkoff's study. 'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'talk of the devil. There is a man who combines all the worst qualities of the Z.Z.'s and the Mizrachi. He also imagines he has a throat disease due to swallowing flecks of the furs he deals in.' After which harangue he collogued amiably with his patient, and said he would come instantly. 'Hasn't he the disease, then?' asked David. 'He has no disease except too much vanity and too much money.' 'While you cure him of the first, I should like to try my hand at the second,' said David laughingly. 'Oh, I'll introduce you, if you let me off.' 'You I don't ask for money, but your medical services would be invaluable. Milovka is in danger.' 'Milovka to the deuce!' cried Lerkoff. 'Our future lies not in Russia.' 'I talk of our present. Do let me appoint you army surgeon.' 'Next year--in Jerusalem!' replied the doctor airily. VI Lerkoff asked David to wait in another room while he saw Herr Cantberg professionally. There was an Ark with scrolls of the Law in the room, betiding a piety and a purse beyond the normal. Presently Lerkoff reappeared chuckling. 'He knows all about you, you infamous rascal,' he said. 'You have told him?' '_He_ told _me_; he always knows everything. You are a baptized police spy, posing as a P.P.S. I suppose he's heard of your visit to Herr Rubensky.' 'But I shall undeceive him!' 'Not if you want his money. Such a blow to his vanity would cost you dear. Go in; I did not tell him _you_ were the young man he was telling me of. I must fly.' The P. Z shook David's hand. 'Don't forget he's the bourgeois type of Zionist; his object is not to create the future, but to resurrect the dead past.' 'And mine is to keep alive the living present. Won't you----?' But the doctor was gone. The Mizrachi Z.Z. proved unexpectedly small in stature and owl-like in expression; but his 'Be seated, sir--be seated; what can I do for you?' had the grand manner. It evoked a resentful chord in David. 'It is something I propose to do for you,' he said bluntly. 'Milovka is in danger.'