X. Esther defies the Universe
XI. Going Home
XII. A Sheaf of Sequels
XIII. The Dead Monkey again
XIV. Sidney settles down
XV. From Soul to Soul
XVI. Love's Temptation
XVII. The Prodigal Son
XVIII. Hopes and Dreams






PROEM.


Not here in our London Ghetto the gates and gaberdines of the olden
Ghetto of the Eternal City; yet no lack of signs external by which
one may know it, and those who dwell therein. Its narrow streets
have no specialty of architecture; its dirt is not picturesque. It
is no longer the stage for the high-buskined tragedy of massacre
and martyrdom; only for the obscurer, deeper tragedy that evolves
from the pressure of its own inward forces, and the long-drawn-out
tragi-comedy of sordid and shifty poverty. Natheless, this London
Ghetto of ours is a region where, amid uncleanness and squalor, the
rose of romance blows yet a little longer in the raw air of English
reality; a world which hides beneath its stony and unlovely surface
an inner world of dreams, fantastic and poetic as the mirage of the