"Don't make it harder for both of us, Mendel. . . . I don't want . . . to marry."
"Please . . . please . . ." she implored him.
A fury began to rise in him. He stamped his foot on the ground and struck his brush across the picture. He made a tremendous effort to recover himself, but before he could say another word she had slipped through the door and was gone. He darted after her, and reached the front-door just in time to see her running as hard as she could down the street and round the corner.
Just as he was, in his shirt-sleeves, hatless and collarless, he went in to see his mother. He was white-hot with rage, and he walked up to her and looked her up and down as though he were trying to persuade himself that she was to blame.
Golda put her hand to her heart and looked at him fearfully as she shook her head.
"I've been refused," he said, "refused by the Christian girl."
"Refused!" cried Golda, who had never heard of such a thing as a girl refusing to marry a rich young man.
"Yes. I proposed to her and she refused."
"The Christians are all alike," said Golda. "They keep themselves to themselves, and you must do the same."
She took a smoked herring from the cupboard and cut it into portions.
"And when your time for marrying comes you must look among the Jews, for the Jews are good people. No Jewish girl would serve you a trick like that. Jewish girls know that they must marry and they are good. But she is young, and you are young, and you will both forget."
FROM the magnificent studio in Hammersmith to two rooms in Camden Town Mr. James Logan removed his worldly goods, a paint-box, half-a-dozen canvases, two pairs of trousers, three shirts, a "Life of Napoleon" in two volumes, and a number of photographs of famous pictures. The magnificent studio had been lent to him by the mistress of its owner, who had returned unexpectedly from abroad, and Mr. James Logan's departure from it was hurried, but unperturbed.
"In my time," he said, "I have kept Fortune busy, but her tricks leave me unmoved. She will get tired of it some day and leave me alone."
All the same he did not relish the change. He was nearly thirty and had tasted sufficient comfort to relish it and to prize it. Also he could not forget the ambitions with which he had come to London five years before. In the North he had won success by storm, and he could not understand any other tactics. He was an extraordinary man and expected immediate recognition of the fact. Upon his own mind his personality had so powerful an effect that he was blind to the fact that it did not have a similar effect upon the minds of others. Women and young men he could always stir into admiration, but men older than himself were only affronted. He knew it and used to curse them:--