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Rozenoffski repelled the attack savagely, but before he could exhaust the enemy's volubility his red-haired companion had given him a friendly nod and smile, and retreated into her shrine of duty. He spent a sleepless but happy night, planning out their future together; her redemption from her hireling status, their joint work for their people. He was no longer afraid of the sea.
'Will you say I shall have much pleasure? he added coldly. The red-haired maid nodded and was gone. Rozenoffski went mechanically to his cabin, scarcely seeing the worshippers he plodded through; presently he became aware that he was changing his linen, brushing his best frock-coat, thrilling with pleasurable excitement. Anon he was tapping at the well-known door.
Rozenoffski gave a masterly start of surprise, and turned his leonine head in dazed bewilderment. Was he not then alone? 'Gott im Himmel! he murmured, and, furiously banging down the piano-lid, stalked from these presumptuous mortals who had jarred the artist's soliloquy.
'Yes, old blood's way is sometimes worse than young blood's, said Frau Schneemann, unsmiling. 'You must not forget that Yossel is still a bachelor. 'Yes, and therefore a sinner in Israel I remember, quoth the artist with a twinkle. How all this would amuse his bachelor friends, Leopold Barstein and Rozenoffski the pianist! 'Make not mock.
Why, the Ghetto could not even realize such indifference to the heavenly tribunals so busily decreeing their life-or-death sentences! Barstein raised his glass. 'Here's a happy new year, anyhow! he said. The three men clinked glasses. Rozenoffski drew out a hundred-lire note. 'Send that to the poor devil, he said. 'Oho! laughed Schneemann. 'You still believe "Charity delivers from death!"
And the larger his audience grew, the fiercer grew his resentment against this complacent Christendom which took so much from the Jew and gave so little. 'Shylocks! he would mutter between his clenched teeth as he played 'Shylocks all! With no less punctuality did Rozenoffski pace the silent deck each night in the hope of again meeting the red-haired Jewess.
Crowded as was the steamer with cultured Americans invading Europe, few knew that Rozenoffski was on board, or even that Rozenoffski was a pianist.
And this riot of ugliness and diamonds and third-rate celebrities was the fashionable society to which, forsooth, the Jew could not be permitted access! The aroma of an expensive cigar wafted towards him, and the face between whose prominent teeth it was stuck loomed vividly in the glare of an electric light. Rozenoffski recognised those teeth.
He read it aloud, breaking down in almost hysterical laughter at each eruption of adjectives from 'the dictionary in distress. Rozenoffski and Schneemann rolled in similar spasms of mirth, and the Italians at the neighbouring tables, though entirely ignorant of the motive of the merriment, caught the contagion, and rocked and shrieked with the mad foreigners.
A slight exclamation came involuntarily from him; the girl, even more startled to be caught thus, relaxed her grip of the letter a puff of wind hastened to whirl it aloft. Rozenoffski grasped at it desperately, but it eluded him, and then descending sailed sternwards.
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