The Hirelings by Israel Zangwill

He spent a sleepless but happy night, planning out their future together; her redemption from her hireling status, their joint work for their people. He was no longer afraid of the sea. He was afraid of nothing -- not even of the _pogroms_ that awaited them in Russia. Russia itself became dear to him again -- the beautiful land of his boyhood, whose birds and whispering leaves and waters had made his earliest music.

But dearer than all resurged his Jewish memories. When he went almost mechanically to the piano on the last afternoon, all these slumbering forces wakened in him found vent in a rhapsody of synagogue melody to which he abandoned himself, for once forgetting his audience. When gradually he became aware of the incongruity, it did but intensify his inspiration. Let the heathen rats wallow in Hebrew music! But soon all self-consciousness passed away again, drowned in his deeper self.