aving all the fun down there,'
called out Sir Asher benevolently; and the bluff Briton--even to the
northerly burr--was so vividly stamped upon Barstein's mind that he
wondered the more that the Mayoress could see him as anything but the
prosy, provincial, whilom Member of Parliament he so transparently
was. 'A mere literary illusion,' he thought. 'She has read the Bible,
and now reads Sir Asher into it. As well see a Saxon pirate or a
Norman jongleur in a modern Londoner.'

As if to confirm Barstein's vision of the bluff and burly Briton, Sir
Asher was soon heard over the clatter of conversation protesting
vehemently against the views of Tom Fuller, the degenerate son of a
Tory squire.

'Give Ireland Home Rule?' he was crying passionately. 'Oh, my dear Mr.
Fuller, it would be the beginning of the end of our Empire!'

'But the Irish have as much right to govern themselves as we have!'
the young Englishman maintained.

'They would not so much govern themselves as misgovern the Protestant
minority,' cried Sir Asher, becoming almost epigrammatic in his
excitement. 'Home Rule simply means the triumph of Roman Catholicism.'

It occurred to the cynical Barstein that even the defeat of Roman
Catholicism meant no victory for Judaism, but he stayed his tongue
with a salted almond. Let the Briton make the running. This the young
gentleman proceeded to do at a great pace.

'Then how about Home Rule for India? There's no Catholic majority
there!'

'Give up India!' Sir Asher opened horrified eyes. This heresy was new
to him. 'Give up the brightest jewel in the British crown! And let the
Russian bear come and swallow it up! No, no! A thousand times no!' Sir
Asher even gestured with his fork in his patriotic fervour, forgetting
he was not on the platform.

'So I imagine the patriarchs to have talked!' said the Mayoress,
admiringly observing his animation. Whereat the sculptor laughed once
more. He was amused, too, at the completeness with which the lion of
Judah had endued himself with the skin of the British lion. To a
cosmopolitan artist this bourgeois patriotism was peculiarly
irritating. But soon his eyes wandered again towards Miss Aaronsberg,
and he forgot trivialities.

II

The end of the meal was punctuated, not by the rising of the ladies,
but by the host's assumption of a black cap, which popped up from his
coat-tail pocket. With his head thus orientally equipped for prayer,
Sir Asher suddenly changed into a