Fima remembered how he had left Nina’s house the previous night, how he had disgraced himself with her, how he had disgraced himself in Ted’s study, how he had shamed himself and Yael in the hall in the dark. In fact, it would be quite nice to pick an argument with these two conspirators now. He could easily tear them to shreds. He guessed that Annette Tadmor had changed her mind, thought better of it, would not keep their date. Why should she? Her full, rounded form, her misery, her plain cotton frock like a schoolgirl’s uniform, all stirred in him a hint of desire mingled with self-mockery: Just as well she changed her mind; she spared you another disgrace.

The young settler stood up and in two long strides he was at Fima’s table. Fima was startled to see that the youngster had a gun in his belt.

“Excuse me, are you by any chance Mr. Prag, the lawyer?”

Fima considered the question, and for a moment he was tempted to answer in the affirmative. He’d always had a soft spot for Prag.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

The settler said:

“We’ve arranged to meet someone we’ve never seen. I thought perhaps it was you. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” Fima declared forcefully, as though firing the first shot in a civil war, “one of you. I think you’re all a plague.”

The young man, with an innocent, sweet smile and a look suggesting Jewish solidarity, said:

“Why not save expressions like that for the enemy? It was groundless hatred that brought down the Temple. It wouldn’t hurt all of us to try a little groundless love for a change.”