"A spiritual destiny embraced willingly--in youth?" Mordecai repeated in a corrective tone. "It was the soul fully born within me, and it came in my boyhood. It brought its own world--a mediaeval world, where there are men who made the ancient language live again in new psalms of exile. They had absorbed the philosophy of the Gentile into the faith of the Jew, and they still yearned toward a center for our race. One of their souls was born again within me, and awakened amid the memories of their world. It traveled into Spain and Provence; it debated with Aben-Ezra; it took ship with Jehuda ha-Levi; it heard the roar of the Crusaders and the shrieks of tortured Israel. And when its dumb tongue was loosed, it spoke the speech they had made alive with the new blood of their ardor, their sorrow, and their martyred trust: it sang with the cadence of their strain."
Mordecai paused again, and then said in a loud, hoarse whisper,
"While it is imprisoned in me, it will never learn another."

"A spiritual destiny embraced willingly in youth?" Mordecai repeated. "Rather it was the soul fully born within me, and it came in my boyhood. It brought its own world - a mediaeval world, where men made the ancient Hebrew language live again in new psalms of exile, and yearned toward a centre for our race. One of their souls was born again within me. It travelled into Spain and Provence; it debated with Aben-Ezra; it took ship with Jehuda ha-Levi; it heard the roar of the Crusaders and the shrieks of tortured Israel. And it spoke the speech they had made alive with the new blood of their ardour and their sorrow; it sang with the cadence of their strain."
