Never by passion quite possessed, And never quite benumbed by the world’s sway. MATTHEW ARNOLD. The party was never prolonged to a late hour on these occasions, and by ten o’clock there was no one left in the drawing-room in Portland Place except Mrs. Sachs, Mr. Leuniger, Mrs. Kohnthal and the young people in their respective trains. The elders had got up a game of whist for the amusement of old Solomon, the termination of which their juniors awaited in conclave at the other end of the room. Lionel and Sidney meanwhile, sleepy and overfed, quarrelled in a corner over the possession of a bound volume of the _Graphic_. “Judith,” said Reuben, who had taken a seat opposite her, “do you know that you have made a conquest?” “Is that such an unheard-of occurrence?” Reuben laughed gently, and Rose cried: “It is Mr. Lee-Harrison! I know it from the way he looked at supper.” “Yes, it is Bertie.” Reuben looked straight in Judith’s eyes. “He says you exactly fulfil his idea of Queen Esther.” “Ah,” cried Esther Kohnthal, “I have always had a theory about _her_. When she was kneeling at the feet of that detestable Ahasuerus, she was thinking all the time of some young Jew whom she mashed, and who mashed her, and whom she renounced for the sake of her people!” A momentary silence fell among them, then Reuben, looking down, said slowly: “Or perhaps she preferred the splendours of the royal position even to the attractions of that youth whom you suppose her to--er--have mashed.” He was not fond of Esther at the best of times; now he glanced at her under his eyelids with an expression of unmistakable dislike. “I wonder,” cried Rose, throwing herself into the breach, “what Mr. Lee-Harrison thought of it all.” “I think,” said Leo, “that he was shocked at finding us so little like the people in _Daniel Deronda_.” “Did he expect,” cried Esther, “to see our boxes in the hall, ready packed and labelled _Palestine_?” “I have always been touched,” said Leo, “at the immense good faith with which George Eliot carried out that elaborate misconception of hers.” “Now Leo is going to begin,” cried Rose; “he never has a good word for his people. He is always running them down.” “Horrid bad form,” said Reuben; “besides being altogether a mistake.” “Oh, I have nothing to say against us at all,” answered Leo ironically, “except that we are materialists to our fingers’ ends. That we have outlived, from the nature of things, such ideals as we ever had.” “Idealists don’t grow on every bush,” answered Reuben, “and I think we have our fair share of them. This is a materialistic age, a materialistic country.” “And ours the religion of materialism. The corn and the wine and the oil; the multiplication of the seed; the conquest of the hostile tribes--these have always had more attraction for us than the harp and crown of a spiritualized existence.”