Deep furrows appeared on Heinrich's forehead and he looked again towards the wall, straight past George, who had sat down on the hard black leather ottoman. "If that's your way of looking at things," replied George, "why, you have no other logical alternative but to join Leo Golowski...." "And migrate to Palestine with him. Is that what you think? As a matter of symbolical politics or actually--what?" He laughed. "Have I ever said that I want to get away from here? That I would prefer to live anywhere else except here? Above all, have I ever said that I liked living among Jews? So far as I at any rate am concerned that would be a purely objective solution of an essentially subjective problem." "I really think so also. And that's why, to tell the truth, I understand less than ever what you want, Heinrich. I had the impression last autumn, when you had your tussle with Golowski on the Sophienalp, that you looked at the matter far more hopefully." "More hopefully?" repeated Heinrich in an injured tone. "Yes. One felt bound to think then that you believed in the possibility of a gradual assimilation." Heinrich contemptuously contracted the corners of his mouth. "Assimilation.... A phrase.... Yes, that'll come all right some time or other ... in a very very long time. It won't come at all in the way many want it to--it won't come either in the way many are afraid it will.... Further, it won't be exactly assimilation ... but perhaps something that beats in the heart of that particular word so to speak. Do you know what it will probably look like in the end? That we, we Jews I mean, have been a kind of ferment in the brewing of humanity--yes, perhaps that'll come out in anything from one to two thousand years from now. It is a consolation too. Don't you think so?" He laughed again. "Who knows," said George reflectively, "if you won't be regarded as right--in a thousand years? But till then?"