Poor Dennis has suffered much. You are perhaps
surprised, but it is true, and when he leaves politics alone he is a
different creature.'
'I am afraid I must be very uninteresting to you?'
'I did not mean that I care for nothing but my friend's aches and
pains, but that I do not care for what he just takes up and takes
on.'
'It is my misfortune that my subjects are not very--I was about to
say--human. Perhaps it is because I am a Jew.'
'I do not know quite what you mean by your "subjects," but if you
mean philosophy and religion, they are human.'
'If they are, very few people like to hear anything about them. Do
you know, Miss Hopgood, I can never talk to anybody as I can to you.'
Clara made no reply. A husband was to be had for a look, for a
touch, a husband whom she could love, a husband who could give her
all her intellect demanded. A little house rose before her eyes as
if by Arabian enchantment; there was a bright fire on the hearth, and
there were children round it; without the look, the touch, there
would be solitude, silence and a childless old age, so much more to
be feared by a woman than by a man. Baruch paused, waiting for her
answer, and her tongue actually began to move with a reply, which
would have sent his arm round her, and made them one for ever, but it
did not come. Something fell and flashed before her like lightning
from a cloud overhead, divinely beautiful, but divinely terrible.
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