ck and our future a quicksand.'

She looked frightened again. 'But what should we do there? We can't
pray all day long.'

'Of course not,' he said eagerly. 'There's the new generation to train
for its glorious future. I shall teach in the Arts and Crafts School.
_Bezalel_, it's called; isn't that a beautiful name? It's from
Bezalel, the first man mentioned in the Bible as filled with Divine
wisdom and understanding in all manner of workmanship.'

She shook her head. 'You'll be excommunicated. The Palestine Rabbis
always excommunicate everything and everybody.'

He laughed. 'What do you know about Palestine?'

'More than you think. Father gets endless letters from there with
pressed flowers and citrons, and olive-wood boxes and paper-knives--a
perennial shower. The letters are generally in the most killing
English. And he won't let me laugh at them because he has a vague
feeling that even Palestine spelling and grammar are holy.'

Barstein laughed again. 'We'll send all the Rabbis to Jericho.'

She smiled, but retorted: 'That's where they'll send you, you maker of
graven images. Why, your very profession is forbidden.'

'I'll corner 'em with this very Bezalel text. The cutting of stones is
just one of the arts which God says He had inspired Bezalel with.
Besides, you forget my statue at the Bale Congress.'

'Bale isn't Palestine. There's nothing but superstition and squalor,
and I'm sorry to say father's always bolstering it all up with his
cheques.'

'Bravo, Sir Asher! Unconsciously he has been bolstering up the
eventual Renaissance. Your father and his kind have kept the seed
alive; we shall bring it to blossom.'

His prophetic assurance cast a fresh shade of apprehension over her
marmoreal brow. But her face lightened with a sudden thought. 'Well,
perhaps, after all, we shan't need to elope.'

'I never thought for a moment we should,' he answered as cheerfully.
'But, all the same, we can spend our honeymoon in Palestine.'

'Oh, I don't mind that,' said Mabel. 'Lots of Christians do that.
There was a Cook's party went out from Middleton for last Easter.'

The lover was too pleased with her acquiescence in the Palestinian
honeymoon to analyse the terms in which it was given. He looked into
her eyes, and saw there the _Shechinah_--the Divine glory that once
rested on Zion.

V

It was in this happier mood that Barstein ran down to Middleton to
plead his suit verbally with Sir Asher Aaronsberg. Mabel