“It was grand in there, but the electric lights are like so many eyes looking you over. In the street it is easier for me. The dark covers you up so good.”
He laughed, refreshed by her unconscious self-revelation.
“As long as you feel in your element let’s walk on to the pier.”
“Like for a holiday, it feels itself in me,” she bubbled, as he took her arm in crossing the street. “Now see I America for the first time!”
It was all so wonderful to Barnes that in the dirt and noise of the overcrowded ghetto, this erstwhile drudge could be transfigured into such a vibrant creature of joy. Even her clothes that had seemed so bold and garish awhile ago, were now inexplicably in keeping with the carnival spirit that he felt steal over him.
As they neared the pier, he reflected strangely upon the fact that out of the thousands of needy, immigrant girls whom he might have befriended, this eager young being at his side was ordained by some peculiar providence to come under his personal protection.
“How long did you say you have been in this country, Shenah Pessah?”
“How long?” She echoed his words as though waking from a dream. “It’s two years already. But that didn’t count life. From now on I live.”
“And you mean to tell me that in all this time, no one has taken you by the hand and shown you the ways of our country? The pity of it!”
“I never had nothing, nor nobody. But now—it dances under me the whole earth! It feels in me grander than dreams!”