An ecstasy of wonder and longing shone from her hungry, young eyes as she gazed at the luxurious dwellings. Such radiance of colour! Fruits, flowers and real orange-trees! Beauty and plenty! Each house outshone the other in beauty and plenty.
Fresh from the East Side tenements, worn from the nerve-racking grind of selling ribbons at the Five and Ten Cent Store, the residential section of Los Angeles was like a magic world of romance too perfect to be real. She had often seen the Fifth Avenue palaces of the New York millionaires when she had treated herself to a bus ride on a holiday. But nothing she had ever seen before compared with this glowing splendour.
“And in one of these mansions of sunshine and roses my own sister lives!” she breathed. “How could Minnie get used to so much free space and sunshine for every day?”
Ten years since Minnie had left Delancey Street. Ten years’ freedom from the black worry for bread. There must have come a new sureness in her step, a new joy of life in her every movement. And to think that Abe Shmukler from cloaks and suits had bought her and brought her to this new world!
Rebecca wondered if her sister ever thought back to Felix Weinberg, the poet who had loved her and whom she had given up to marry this bank account man.
With the passionate ardour of adolescence Rebecca had woven an idyll for herself out of her sister’s love affair. Felix Weinberg had become for her the symbol of beauty and romance. His voice, his face, the lines he had written to Minnie, coloured Rebecca’s longings and dreams. With the love cadence of the poet’s voice still stirring in her heart, she put her finger on the door bell.
The door was opened by a trim maid in black, whose superior scrutiny left Rebecca speechless.
Her own sister Minnie with a stiff lady for a servant!
“My sister, is she in? I just came from New York.”
“Rebecca!” cried a familiar voice, as she was smothered in hungry arms. “Oi weh! How many years! You were yet so little then. Now you’re a grown-up person.” And overcome by the memories of their ghetto days together, they sobbed in one another’s arms.