"The quethtions were rhetorical, Mithter Pryde," he answered softly. "Why? Becauthe I was fighting the old old battle which my fatherth and their fatherth ’ad to fight since sin made my people subject." He raised his voice. It was as the voice of a prophet. The Archdeacon, listening, wondered, and forgot to notice the slurred words and broken pronunciation which proclaimed this Jew a stranger within the gates. "Yearth ago--in the dayth of the Pharaoh you mentioned--the Curse was fastened upon uth; even now the yoke ith not removed; we are tortured with its barbs and burdened with its misery. We are, even now, regarded by many as rogues and thieves and money-tyrants, but with all our faults as a race we do not detherve it. It ith ath a race we are judged, and ath individualth of a race we are punished. We are regarded as unwashed foreigners, as unclean beasts. The whole tone of religion is in this rethpect againtht its true thelf. In teaching love for all men, it alwayth forgeth the foreign Jew. Mithter Pryde, will you preach and teach and act so that we--the poorest and the ’umblest and the worst of us--may get the tolerance and fair play which is every man’s right?" Oldstein had exhausted the spell. He had said his say, had spoken for his people, with warmth and earnestness. His burst of eloquence was done. He was again one of the rank and file of Judaism, conscious of his pride of race, conscious at the same time of an incomprehensible sense of inferiority to this large, clean, pompous, well-intentioned Englishman. Why was it so? Was it because, for years upon years, he and his forebears, though inheriting the responsibilities of agelong aristocracy, had forgotten their inheritance, and been content to cringe before the powerful and wealthy, pleased to pander to their vanity and vices, for the sake of the shekels of trade? There was silence--almost noisy with thought--for more than a minute. June with her wand had stirred deep pools. The insoluble problems of Israel were for awhile alive again. Another stage in the long-drawn opposition of Gentile and Jew was manifested. Can that antagonism ever be ended? Is such a fact to be numbered among human possibilities? Questions, questions! The Archdeacon, touched by Oldstein’s earnestness, lost his pomposity, and forgot his poses. He leaned forward; put a hand on his guest’s shoulder.