sun.

The happy laughter of the shopgirls standing on the stoop with their beaux and the sight of the young mothers with their husbands and babies fanned anew the consuming fire in her breast.

“I’m not jealous!” she gasped, chokingly. “My heart hurts too deep to want to tear from them their luck to happiness. But why should they live and enjoy life and why must I only look on how they are happy?”

She clutched at her throat like one stifled for want of air. “What is the matter with you? Are you going out of your head? For what is your crying? Who will listen to you? Who gives a care what’s going to become from you?”

Crushed by her loneliness, she sank into a chair. For a long time she sat motionless, finding drear fascination in the mocking faces traced in the patches of the torn plaster. Gradually, she became aware of a tingling warmth playing upon her cheeks. And with a revived breath, she drank in the miracle of the sunlit wall.

“Ach!” she sighed. “Once a year the sun comes to light up even this dark cellar, so why shouldn’t the High One send on me too a little brightness?”

This new wave of hope swept aside the fact that she was the “greenhorn” janitress, that she was twenty-two and dowryless, and, according to the traditions of her people, condemned to be shelved aside as an unmated thing—a creature of pity and ridicule.

“I can’t help it how old I am or how poor I am!” she burst out to the deaf and dumb air. “I want a little life! I want a little joy!”

The bell rang sharply, and as she turned to answer the call, she saw a young man at the doorway—a framed picture of her innermost dreams.

The stranger spoke.

Shenah Pessah did not hear the words, she heard only the music of his voice. She gazed fascinated at his clothes—the loose Scotch tweeds, the pongee shirt, a bit open at the neck, but she did not see him or the things he wore. She only felt an irresistible presence seize her soul. It was as though the god of her innermost longings had suddenly taken shape in human form and lifted her in mid-air.

“Does the janitor live here?” the stranger repeated.

Shenah Pessah nodded.

“Can you show me the room to let?”

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