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The thought forced from him a sardonic smile.

‘And I feared you were like King Henry–never going to smile again.’ Mabel smiled back in relief.

‘We’re such a ridiculous people,’ he answered, his smile fading into sombreness. ‘Neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring.’

‘Well, finish your good white fowl,’ laughed Mabel. She had felt her hold over him slipping, and her own apprehensions now vanished in the effort to banish his gloom.

But she had only started him on a new tack. ‘Fowl!’ he cried grimly. ‘Kosher, of course, but with bits of fried Wurst to ape the scraps of bacon. And presently we shall be having water ices to simulate cream. We can’t even preserve our dietary individuality. Truly said Feuerbach, “Der Mensch ist was er isst.” In Palestine we shall at least dare to be true to our own gullets.’ He laughed bitterly.

‘You’re not very romantic,’ Mabel pouted. Indeed, this Barstein, whose mere ideal could so interrupt the rhapsodies due to her admissions of affection, was distinctly unsatisfactory. She touched his hand furtively under the tablecloth.

‘After all, she is very young,’ he thought, thrilling. And youth was plastic–he, the sculptor, could surely mould her. Besides, was she not Sir Asher’s daughter? She must surely have inherited some of his love for Palestine and his people. It was this Philistine set that had spoiled her. Julius, too, that young Oxford prig–he reflected illogically–had no doubt been a baleful influence.

‘Shall I give you some almond-pudding?’ he replied tenderly.

Mabel laughed uneasily. ‘I ask for romance, and you offer me almond-pudding. Oh, I should like to go to a Jewish party where there wasn’t almond-pudding!’

‘You shall–in Palestine,’ he laughed back.

She pouted again. ‘All roads lead to Palestine.’

‘They do,’ he said seriously. ‘Without Palestine our past is a shipwreck 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.