'You have lived among your books,' Esther went on. 'I have lived among the brutal facts. I was born in the Ghetto, and when you talk of the mission of Israel, silent sardonic laughter goes through me as I think of the squalor and the misery.' 'God works through human sufferings. His ways are large,' said Raphael, almost in a whisper. 'And wasteful,' said Esther. 'Spare me clerical platitudes _à la_ Strelitski. I have seen so much.' 'And suffered much?' he asked gently. She nodded, scarce perceptibly. 'Oh, if you only knew my life!' 'Tell it me,' he said. His voice was soft and caressing. His frank soul seemed to pierce through all conventionalities, and to go straight to hers. 'I cannot--not now,' she murmured. 'There is so much to tell.' 'Tell me a little,' he urged. She began to speak of her history, scarce knowing why, forgetting he was a stranger. Was it racial affinity, or was it merely the spiritual affinity of souls that feel their identity through all differences of brain? 'What is the use?' she said. 'You with your childhood could never realise mine. My mother died when I was seven; my father was a Russian pauper alien who rarely got work. I had an elder brother of brilliant promise. He died before he was thirteen. I had a lot of brothers and sisters and a grandmother, and we all lived, half starved, in a garret.' Her eyes grew humid at the recollection; she saw the spacious drawing-room and the dainty _bric à brac_ through a mist. 'Poor child!' murmured Raphael.