"Well, have you seen this Fanny Radowski?" said Lord Silverdale, when he returned the manuscript to the President of the Old Maids' Club.  
"Of course. Didn't I tell you I had the story from her own mouth, though I have put it into Mendoza's?"
 
"Ah, yes, I remember now. It certainly is funny, her refusing a good Catholic on the ground that he was a bad Jew. But then according to the story she doesn't know he's a Catholic?"
 
"No, it was I who divined the joke of the situation. Lookers-on always see more of the game. I saw at once that if Mendoza were really a Jew, he would never have been such an ass¹ as to make the slip he did; and so from this and several other things she told me about her lover, I constructed deductively the history you have read. She says she first met him at a mourning service in memory of her father, and that it is a custom among her people when they have not enough men to form a religious quorum³ (the number is the mystical ten) to invite any brother Jew who may be passing to step in, whether he is an acquaintance or not."
 
"I gathered that from the narrative," said Lord Silverdale. "And so she wishes to be an object lesson in female celibacy⁴, does she?"
 
"She is most anxious to enlist⁵ in the Cause."
 
"Is she really beautiful, et cetera?"
 
"She is magnificent."
 
"Then I should say the very member we are looking for. A Jewess will be an extremely valuable element of the Club, for her race exalts⁷ marriage even above happiness, and an old maid is even more despised than among us. The lovely Miss Radowski will be an eloquent⁸ protest against the prejudices of her people."
 
Lillie Dulcimer shook her head quietly. "The racial accident which makes her seem a desirable member to you, makes me regard her as impossible."
 
"How so?" cried Silverdale in amazement⁹. "You surely are not going to degrade your Club by anti-Semitism."
 
"Heaven forefend! But a Jewess can never be a whole Old Maid."
 
"I don't understand."
 
"Look at it mathematically a moment."
 
Silverdale made a grimace¹⁰.
 
"Consider! A Jewess, orthodox like Miss Radowski, can only be an Old Maid fractionally. An Old Maid must make 'the grand refusal!'—she must refuse mankind at large. Now Miss Radowski, being cut off by her creed¹¹ from marrying into any but an insignificant¹² percentage of mankind, is proportionately less valuable as an object-lesson; she is unfitted for the functions of Old Maidenhood¹³ in their full potentiality. Already by her religion she is condemned¹⁴ to almost total celibacy. She cannot renounce¹⁵ what she never possessed¹⁶. There are in the world, roughly speaking, eight million Jews among a population of a thousand millions. The force of the example, in other words, her value as an Old Maid, may therefore be represented by .008."
 
"I am glad you express her as a decimal rather than a vulgar fraction," said Lord Silverdale laughing. "But I  must own your reckoning seems correct. As a mathematical wrangler¹⁷ you are terrible. So I shall not need to try Miss Radowski?"
 
"No; we cannot entertain her application," said Lillie peremptorily¹⁸, the thunder-cloud no bigger than a man's hand gathering¹⁹ on her brow at the suspicion that Silverdale did not take her mathematics seriously. Considering that in keeping him at arm's length her motive²⁰ were merely mathematical (though Lord Silverdale was not aware of this) she was peculiarly sensitive on the point. She changed the subject quickly by asking what poem he had brought her.
 
"Do not call them poems," he answered.
 
"It is only between ourselves. There are no critics about."
 
"Thank you so much. I have brought one suggested by the strange farrago of religions that figured in your last human document. It is a pæan on the growing hospitality of the people towards the gods of other nations. There was a time when free trade in divinities was tabu, each nation protecting, and protected by, its own. Now foreign gods are all the rage."
 
"THE END OF THE CENTURY" CATHOLIC CREDO.
 
I'm a Christo-Jewish Quaker,
Moslem²¹, Atheist²² and Shaker,
Auld²³ Licht Church of England Fakir,
Antinomian Baptist, Deist,
Gnostic, Neo-Pagan Theist,
Presbyterianish Papist,
Comtist, Mormon, Darwin-apist,
Trappist, High Church Unitarian,
Sandemanian Sabbatarian,
Plymouth Brother, Walworth Jumper,
Southcote South-Place Bible-Thumper,
Christadelphian, Platonic²⁴,
Old Moravian, Masonic,
Corybantic Christi-antic,
Ethic-Culture-Transatlantic,
Anabaptist, Neo-Buddhist,
Zoroastrian Talmudist,
Laotsean, Theosophic,
Table-rapping, Philosophic²⁵,
Mediæval, Monkish²⁶, Mystic,
Modern, Mephistophelistic,
Hellenistic, Calvinistic,
Brahministic, Cabbalistic,
Humanistic, Tolstoistic,
Rather Robert Elsmeristic,
Altruistic²⁷, Hedonistic
And Agnostic Manichæan,
Worshipping the Galilean.
For with equal zeal²⁸ I follow
Sivah, Allah, Zeus, Apollo,
Mumbo Jumbo, Dagon, Brahma,
Buddha²⁹ alias³⁰ Gautama,
Jahvé, Juggernaut and Juno—
Plus some gods that but the few know.
Though I reverence³¹ the Mishna,
I can bend the knee to Vishna;
I obey the latest mode in
Recognizing Thor and Odin,
Just as freely as the Virgin³²;
For the Pope and Mr. Spurgeon,
Moses, Paul and Zoroaster,
Each to me is seer and master.
I consider Heine, Hegel,
Schopenhauer, Shelley, Schlegel,
Diderot, Savonarola,
Dante, Rousseau, Goethe, Zola,
Whitman, Renan (priest of Paris),
Transcendental Prophet Harris,
Ibsen, Carlyle, Huxley, Pater
Each than all the others greater.
And I read the Zend-Avesta,
Koran, Bible, Roman Gesta,
Ind's Upanischads and Spencer
With affection e'er intenser.
For these many appellations³³
Of the gods of different nations,
I believe—from Baal to Sun-god—
All at bottom cover one god.
Him I worship—dropping gammon—
And his mighty³⁴ name is Mammon.
"You are very hard upon the century—or rather upon the end of it," said Lillie.
 
"The century is dying unshriven," said the satirist³⁵ solemnly. "Its conscience must be stirred. Truly, was there ever an age which had so much light and so little sweetness? In the reckless fight for gold Society has become a mutual³⁶ swindling association. Cupidity³⁷ has ousted³⁸ Cupid, and everything is bought and sold."
 
"Except your poems, Lord Silverdale," laughed Lillie.
 
It was tit for the tat of his raillery of her mathematics.
 
Before his lordship had time to make the clever retort the thought of next day, Turple the magnificent brought in a card.
 
"Miss Winifred Woodpecker?" said Lillie queryingly. "I suppose it's another candidate. Show her in."
 
Miss Woodpecker was a tall stately girl, of the kind that pass for lilies in the flowery language of the novelists.
 
"Have I the pleasure of speaking to Miss Dulci............