“Ach! When I give myself a look around on all the people laughing and talking, it makes me so happy I’m one of them.” “Ut! These Americanerins! Their heads is only on ice-cream soda and style.” “But it makes me feel so grand to be with all these hands alike. It’s as if I just got out from the choking prison into the open air of my own people.” She paused for breath--a host of memories overpowering her. “I can’t give it out in words,” she went on. “But just as there ain’t no bottom to being poor, there ain’t no bottom to being lonely. Before, everything I done was alone, by myself. My heart hurt so with hunger for people. But here, in the factory, I feel I’m with everybody together. Just the sight of people lifts me on wings in the air.” Opening her bag of lunch which had lain unheeded in her lap, she turned to him with a queer, little laugh, “I don’t know why I’m so talking myself out to you--” “Only talk more. I want to know everything about yourself.” An aching tenderness rushed out of his heart to her, and in his grave simplicity he told her how he had overheard one of the girls say that she, Shenah Pessah, looked like a “greeneh yenteh,” just landed from the ship, so that he cried out, “Gottuniu! If only the doves from the sky were as beautiful!” They looked at each other solemnly--the girl’s lips parted, her eyes wide and serious. “That first day I came to the shop, the minute I gave a look on you, I felt right away, here’s somebody from home. I used to tremble so to talk to a man, but you--you--I could talk myself out to you like thinking in myself.” “You’re all soft silk and fine velvet,” he breathed reverently. “In this hard world, how could such fineness be?” An embarrassed silence fell between them as she knotted and unknotted her colored kerchief. “I’ll take you home? Yes?” he found voice at last. Under lowered lashes she smiled her consent. “I’ll wait for you downstairs, closing time.” And he was gone. The noon hour was not yet over, but Shenah Pessah returned to her machine. “Shall I tell him?” she mused. “Sam Arkin understands so much, shall I tell him of this man that burns in me? If I could only give out to some one about him in my heart--it would make me a little clear in the head.” She glanced at Sam Arkin furtively. “He’s kind, but could he understand? I only made a fool from myself trying to tell Sadie Kranz.” All at once she began to sob without reason. She ran to the cloak-room and hid from prying eyes, behind the shawls and wraps. The emptiness of all for which she struggled pressed upon her like a dead weight, dragging her down, down--the reaction of her ecstasy. As the gong sounded, she made a desperate effort to pull herself together and returned to her work.