and reproach on one another and at length subsided, checked by exhaustion rather than by some more charitable cause. And as the tumult died away Sterling, two spots of colour burning on his pallid face, goaded completely from his former affectation of coldly elegant disdain, could be heard saying to Fried in a high, excited, almost hysterical tone:
“The kind of attack you make is simply stupid! It doesn’t get you anywhere! And it’s so crude! So raucous! After all, there’s no reason why you’ve always got to be so raucous!”—the way he said the word was “raw-kus,” his thin hands were trembling, and the two spots of colour burned fiercely in his thin pale face; in this and the bitter way in which he said “raucous” there was finally something pitiable and futile.
And at the end, when all their strident cries had died away, the dark embittered visage of the Jew surveyed them wearily, and held them in its sway again. For as if conceding now what was most evident—that his savage, disappointed spirit had a hard integrity, an unashamed conviction, an ugly, snarling but most open courage which they lacked, they sat there, and looked at him in silence, somehow conveying by that silence a sense of bitter and unwilling respect for him, a final admission of agreement and defeat.
And he, too, when he spoke now, spoke wearily, with a bitter resignation, as if he realized the futility of his victory over them, the futility of hurling further insults, oaths, and accusations at people who knew the bitter truth of his complaint as well as he.
“Nah!” he said quietly in a moment, with this same note of bitter, weary resignation in his voice. “To hell wit’it! Wat t’hell’s the use of tryin’to pretend it isn’t so? You guys all know the way things are! You come over here and you think you’re sittin’pretty right on top of the world! You think these guys are goin’to throw their ahms around your neck and kiss you, because they love Americans so much! And what happens?” He laughed bitterly. “Are you telling me? Christ! You can stay here for three years and none of them will ever give a tumble to you! You can eat your heart out for all they care, and when you leave here you’ll know no more about them than when you came. And what does it getcha? What’s it all about? Wat t’hell do you get out of it that’s so wonderful?”
“I thought,” one of the first-year men suggested mildly, and a trifle piously, as if he were quoting one of the articles of faith, “that you were supposed
