“You will never do it with the old generation,” said Strelitski.  “My hope is in the new.  Moses led the Jews forty years through the wilderness merely to eliminate the old.  Give me young men, and I will move the world.”

“You will do nothing by attempting too much,” said Raphael; “you will only dissipate your strength.  For my part, I shall be content to raise Judaea an inch.”

“Go on, then,” said Strelitski.  “That will give me a barley-corn.  But I’ve wasted too much’ of your time, I fear.  Good-bye.  Remember your promise.”

He held out his hand.  He had grown quite calm, now his decision was taken.

“Good-bye,” said Raphael, shaking it warmly.  “I think I shall cable to America, ‘Behold, Joseph the dreamer cometh.’”

“Dreams are our life,” replied Strelitski.  “Lessing was right—­aspiration is everything.”

“And yet you would rob the orthodox Jew of his dream of Jerusalem!  Well, if you must go, don’t go without your tie,” said Raphael, picking it up, and feeling a stolid, practical Englishman in presence of this enthusiast.  “It is dreadfully dirty, but you must wear it a little longer.”

“Only till the New Year, which is bearing down upon us,” said Strelitski, thrusting it into his pocket.  “Cost what it may, I shall no longer countenance the ritual and ceremonial of the season of Repentance.  Good-bye again.  If you should be writing to Miss Ansell, I should like her to know how much I owe her.”

“But I tell you I don’t know her address,” said Raphael, his uneasiness reawakening.

“Surely you can write to her publishers?”

And the door closed upon the Russian dreamer, leaving the practical Englishman dumbfounded at his never having thought of this simple expedient.  But before he could adopt it the door was thrown open again by Pinchas, who had got out of the habit of knocking through Raphael being too polite to reprimand him.  The poet, tottered in, dropped wearily into a chair, and buried his face in his hands, letting an extinct cigar-stump slip through his fingers on to the literature that carpeted the floor.

“What is the matter?” inquired Raphael in alarm.

“I am miserable—­vairy miserable.”

“Has anything happened?”

“Nothing.  But I have been thinking vat have I come to after all these years, all these vanderings.  Nothing!  Vat vill be my end?  Oh.  I am so unhappy.”

“But you are better off than you ever were in your life.  You no longer live amid the squalor of the Ghetto; you are clean and well dressed:  you yourself admit that you can afford to give charity now.  That looks as if you’d come to something—­not nothing.”

“Yes,” said the poet, looking up eagerly, “and I am famous through the vorld. Metatoron’s Flames vill shine eternally.”  His head drooped again.  “I have all I vant, and you are the best man in the vorld.  But I am the most miserable.”