“No, you did not startle me. I’ve been to a lecture,” she said sinking in a sleep-like stupor into a chair drawn up beyond the light of the window, opposite his own, across which there struck a shaft of light falling, now that he was again seated, only on his face. Miriam gazed at him from within the sheltering darkness, fumbling sleepily for the way back to some lucid recovery of the event of her evening. “Ah. It is a pity I could not be there.” His words broke into the stillness, an immensity of communication, thrown forward through their unrestricted sitting, in the darkness, where, to bridge, before to-morrow, the gap made by his evening’s absence, he had waited for her. She sat silent, her days once more wound closely about her, an endless hospitable chain. “Tell me of this lecture.” “Philosophy.” “Tsa. It is _indeed_ a pity.” “It is a series” ... are you sitting there already involved in engagements ... cut off; changed ... “Excellent. I shall most certainly come.” He was looking freely ahead. His evening had not interested him .... he had gone and come back, his horizons unenlarged .... but not seeing the impression he had made on those people; the steps they would take. “It would be splendid for you. The lecturer’s English _wonderful_. The way the close thought made his sentences, fascinated me so much, that I often missed the meaning in listening to the rhythm; like a fugue.” Aren’t you _glad_ you’ve enlarged your horizons? Don’t you know what people are ... what you, a person, are to people? Are you a person? In a blankness, life streamed up in spirals, vanishing, leaving nothing .... “That is not bad. Ah I should not have paid this visit. It was also in some respects most painful to me.” Poor little man, poor little lonely man white-faced and sensitive, in a world without individuals; grown and formed and wise without realising an individual; never to realise. Audible within the darkness was a singing, hovering on spaces of warm rosy light. “You must not regret your visit.” “Regret no; it was much as I anticipated. But it is disheartening, this actual witnessing.” They were disposed of in some way; in one piece; he would have a formula. “What are they like?” “Quite as I expected; good simple people, kind and hospitable. I have been the whole evening there. Ah but it is sad for me this first meeting with English Jews.” “Perhaps you can make Zionists of them.” “That is absolutely impossible.” “Did you talk to them about Zionism?” “It is useless to talk to these people whose first pride is that they are _British_.” “But they’re _not_.” “You should tell them so. They will tell you they are British of the Jewish persuasion. Ah it has revolted me to hear them talk of this war, the British Empire, and the subject races.” “I know; disgusting; but very British. But the British Empire has done a good deal for the Jews and I suppose the Jews feel loyal.”