He was the first self-deceiver Mendel had met, and the encounter disturbed him greatly and depressed him not a little, so that he was rather overawed than elated by the prospect in front of him. He felt strangely flung back upon himself, and that this help given to him was not really help. He was still, as always, utterly alone with his obscure desperate purpose for sole companion. Nobody knew about that purpose, since he could never define it except in his work, and that to other people was simply something to be looked at with pleasure or indifference, as it happened. He used to try and explain it to his mother, and she used to nod her head and say: "Yes. Yes. I understand. That is God. He is behind everybody, though it is given to few to know it. It is given to you, and God has chosen you, as He chose Samuel. . . . Yes. Yes. God has chosen you." And he found it a relief sometimes to think that God had chosen him, though he was disturbed to find Golda much less moved by that idea than by the letter which Mr. Froitzheim wrote to her, in which he said that her son had a very rare talent, a very beautiful nature, and that a day would come when she would be proud of his fame. Yet there were unhappy days of waiting. Jacob would not hear of his leaving the factory until everything was settled, and when Mendel told the foreman he was probably going to leave to be an artist, that worthy drew the most horrible picture of the artist's life as a mixture of debauchery and starvation, and told a story of a friend of his, a marvellous sculptor, who had come down to carving urns for graves--all through the drink and the models; much better, he said, to stick to a certain income and the saints. At last Maurice Birnbaum came in his motor-car. Everything was settled. The fees at the Detmold would be paid as long as the reports were satisfactory, and Mendel would be allowed five shillings a week pocket-money, but he must be well-behaved and clean, and he must read good literature and learn to write good English. "I will see to that," said Maurice. "I am to take him now with some of his work to see Sir Julius. His fortune is made, Mrs. Kühler. Isn't it wonderful? He is a genius. He has the world at his feet. Everything is open to him. I have been to Oxford, Mrs. Kühler, but I shall never have anything like the opportunities that he will have. It is marvellous to think of his drawing like that in your kitchen." Maurice was really excited. His heart was as full of kindness as a honeycomb of honey, but he had no tact. His words fell on Golda and Mendel like hailstones. They nipped and stung and chilled. Golda looked at Mendel, he at her, and they stood ashamed. "We must hurry," said Maurice. "Sir Julius must not be kept waiting. He is a stickler for punctuality."