Perhaps I play in your company.  I am a great actor—­hein?  You know not my forte is voman’s parts—­I make myself so lovely complexion vith red paint, I fall in love vith me.”  He sniggered over his stout.  “The Redacteur vill not redact long, hein?” he said presently.  “He is a fool-man.  If he work for nothing they think that is what he is worth.  They are orthodox, he, he!”

“But he is orthodox too,” said little Sampson.

“Yes,” replied Pinchas musingly.  “It is strange.  It is very strange.  I cannot understand him.  Never in all my experience have I met another such man.  There vas an Italian exile I talked vith once in the island of Chios, his eyes were like Leon’s, soft vith a shining splendor like the stars vich are the eyes of the angels of love.  Ah, he is a good man, and he writes sharp; he has ideas, not like an English Jew at all.  I could throw my arms round him sometimes.  I love him like a brother.”  His voice softened.  “Another glass stout; ve vill drink to him.”

Raphael did not find the editing by Committee feasible.  The friction was incessant, the waste of time monstrous.  The second number cost him even more headaches than the first, and this, although the gallant Gluck abandoning his single-handed emprise fortified himself with a real live compositor and had arranged for the paper to be printed by machinery.  The position was intolerable.  It put a touch of acid into his dulciferous mildness!  Just before going to press he was positively rude to Pinchas.  It would seem that little Sampson sheltering himself behind his capitalists had refused to give the poet a commission for a comic opera, and Pinchas raved at Gideon, M.P., who he was sure was Sampson’s financial backer, and threatened to shoot him and danced maniacally about the office.

“I have written an attack on the Member for Vitechapel,” he said, growing calmer, “to hand him down to the execration of posterity, and I have brought it to the Flag.  It must go in this veek.”

“We have already your poem,” said Raphael.

“I know, but I do not grudge my work, I am not like your money-making English Jews.”

“There is no room.  The paper is full.”

“Leave out Ebenezer’s tale—­with the blue spectacles.”

“There is none.  It was completed in one number.”

“Well, must you put in your leader?”

“Absolutely; please go away.  I have this page to read.”

“But you can leave out some advertisements?”

“I must not.  We have too few as it is.”

The poet put his finger alongside his nose, but Raphael was adamant.

“Do me this one favor,” he pleaded.  “I love you like a brother; just this one little thing.  I vill never ask another favor of you all my life.”

“I would not put it in, even if there was room.  Go away,” said Raphael, almost roughly.

The unaccustomed accents gave Pinchas a salutary shock.  He borrowed two shillings and left, and Raphael was afraid to look up lest he should see his head wedged in the doorway.  Soon after Gluck and his one compositor carried out the forms to be machined.  Little Sampson, arriving with a gay air on his lips, met them at the door.