For Mendel the moral aspect of Kuit's profession had been settled once and for all by his seeing the Rabbi with his face turned to the wall, in the middle of the most terrible of prayers, filch some pennies from an overcoat. Religion therefore was one thing, life was another, and life included theft. Kuit was the only man who could think of painting apart from money, and it was Kuit who gave him a new box of oil colours, stolen from a studio which he broke into on purpose, and _en passant_ from one rich house in Kensington to another. Kuit used to say: "One thing is true for one man and another for another. And what is true for a man is what he does best. For Harry it is boxing, for Issy it is women and dancing, and for Mr. Kühler it is being honest. For me it is showing the business thieves that they cannot have things all their own way, and outwitting the police. Oh yes! They know me and I know them, but they will never catch me." So charming was Mr. Kuit that Jacob could not object to taking care from time to time of the property that passed through his hands, and the kitchen was often splendid with marble clocks and Oriental china and Sheffield plate, which never looked anything but out of place among the cheap oleographs and the sideboard with its green paper frills round the flashing gilt china that was never used. The kitchen was the living-room of the house, for Jacob only ate when he was hungry, and it was rarely that two sat down to a meal together. As often as not Mendel had his paints on the table, and the objects he was painting were not to be moved. He clung to his painting as the only comfort in his distress, and he would frequently work away with his brushes though he could hardly see what he was at, and knew that he was entirely devoid of the feeling that until the discomfort broke out in his soul had never failed him. He dared not look outside his circumstances for comfort, and within them was the most absolute denial of that cherished feeling for loveliness and colour. Beyond certain streets he never ventured. He felt lost outside the immediate neighbourhood of his home, and only Mr. Kuit reassured him with the confidence with which he spoke of such remote regions as Kensington and Bayswater and Mayfair. The rest clung to the little district where the shops and the language and the smells were Jewish. Yet there, too, Mendel felt lost, though he had an immense reverence for the old Jews, for the Rabbis who pored all day long over their books, and the ancient bearded men who, like his mother, could sit for hours together doing nothing at all. He loved their tragic, wrinkled faces and their steadfast peace, so stark a contrast to the chatter and the wrangling and the harshness that filled his home.