“I’m going out, Mary,” she said, her heart beating violently.

“Sure an’ it’s rale purty ye look, Miss Esther; but it’s divil a bit the marnin’ for a walk, it looks a raw kind of a day, as if the weather was sorry for bein’ so bright yisterday.”

“Oh, but I must go, Mary.”

“Ah, the saints bliss your kind heart!” said Mary, catching sight of the bag.  “Sure, then, it’s a charity irrand you’re bent on.  I mind me how my blissed old masther, Mr. Goldsmith’s father, Olov Hasholom, who’s gone to glory, used to walk to Shool in all winds and weathers; sometimes it was five o’clock of a winter’s marnin’ and I used to get up and make him an iligant cup of coffee before he wint to Selichoth; he niver would take milk and sugar in it, becaz that would be atin’ belike, poor dear old ginthleman.  Ah the Holy Vargin be kind to him!”

“And may she be kind to you, Mary,” said Esther.  And she impulsively pressed her lips to the old woman’s seamed and wrinkled cheek, to the astonishment of the guardian of Judaism.  Virtue was its own reward, for Esther profited by the moment of the loquacious creature’s breathlessness to escape.  She opened the hall door and passed into the silent streets, whose cold pavements seemed to reflect the bleak stony tints of the sky.

For the first few minutes she walked hastily, almost at a run.  Then her pace slackened; she told herself there was no hurry, and she shook her head when a cabman interrogated her.  The omnibuses were not running yet.  When they commenced, she would take one to Whitechapel.  The signs of awakening labor stirred her with new emotions; the early milkman with his cans, casual artisans with their tools, a grimy sweep, a work-girl with a paper lunch-package, an apprentice whistling.  Great sleeping houses lined her path like gorged monsters drowsing voluptuously.  The world she was leaving behind her grew alien and repulsive, her heart went out to the patient world of toil.  What had she been doing all these years, amid her books and her music and her rose-leaves, aloof from realities?

The first ’bus overtook her half-way and bore her back to the Ghetto.

* * * * *

The Ghetto was all astir, for it was half-past eight of a work-a-day morning.  But Esther had not walked a hundred yards before her breast was heavy with inauspicious emotions.  The well-known street she had entered was strangely broadened.  Instead of the dirty picturesque houses rose an appalling series of artisans’ dwellings, monotonous brick barracks, whose dead, dull prose weighed upon the spirits.  But, as in revenge, other streets, unaltered, seemed incredibly narrow.  Was it possible it could have taken even her childish feet six strides to cross them, as she plainly remembered?  And they seemed so unspeakably sordid and squalid.  Could she ever really have walked them with light heart, unconscious of the ugliness?  Did the gray atmosphere that overhung them ever lift, or was it their natural and appropriate mantle?  Surely the sun could never shine upon these slimy pavements, kissing them to warmth and life.