He sat there unable to speak to her through his hate. And yet the perspiration on the palms of his hands was to him the sign of embarrassment also, for he was polite to an extreme and he could not say that he was not Jewish without coloring the word with his repugnance for it, and thus for her. And in his inability to speak, in his embarrassment she seemed to see conclusive proof, and strangely – quite insanely – he helplessly conceded that it was almost proof. For to him Jew had always meant impostor. Since the beginning. It was the one thing it had always meant. The poor Jews pretended they were poorer than they were, the rich richer. He had never been able to pass a Jewish neighborhood without seeing behind the dingy curtains hidden sums of money. He had never seen a Jew driving an expensive car without likening him to a nigger driving an expensive car. To him they had no tradition of nobility such as they attempted to flaunt. Had he had an expensive car he would instantly have appeared as one who had been born to it. Any gentile would. Never a Jew. Their houses smelled, and when they did not it was only because they wanted to seem like gentiles. For him, whatever they did that was pleasing was never done naturally, but out of a desire to ingratiate themselves. This knowledge was as old as his life which had begun on a street in Brooklyn one block away from the Jewish neighborhood. Then as now, he could not think of them without a sense of power and self-purification. Listening to reports of their avarice insensibly brought him closer to an appreciation of his own liberality, which seemed proven by the simple fact that he was not a Jew. And when he encountered an openhanded Jew his own parsimonious nature was outraged, and since he saw all men only through his own eyes, in the Jew’s open-handedness he saw only trickery or self-display. Pretenders, impostors. Always.

And now in his embarrassment she was reading the proof of that pretense, he thought. The challenging sneer in her eyes was unbearable and yet he still could not speak. He sought pleasantries and could not evoke them. He turned away from her impatiently and turned back. It only took a moment, and then he knew for the first time in his life that it was not politeness choking back his words. He was sitting there in the guilt of the fact that the evil nature of the Jews and their numberless deceits, especially their sensuous lust for women –of which fact he had daily proof in the dark folds of their eyes and their swarthy skin – all were the reflections of his own desires with which he had invested them. For this moment he knew it and perhaps never again, for in this moment her eyes had made a Jew of him; and his monstrous desire was holding back his denial. He found himself wanting her to believe it of him just for this moment, here alone in the office, wanting her to let him dip into that dark pool whose depths he had often searched, only to turn away. Just for this private moment to descend, and find out …