With them she was a general favorite. They used to declare that she put yeast in their beds, for they were like pans of dough, feathery and white, when she made them of a morning; and Serena, spinning the pie-plates round, scalloping the edges of the crust with a four-tined fork, or knitting in the sitting-room from a ball of pink yarn that danced on the carpet as she unraveled it, was a spectacle of domesticity at which they never tired of gazing. Yet her dignity, which was far beyond her years, prevented their making her a plaything. Though cordial, she was very reserved. Young ladies called her set; young men, seraphic but cold.
You may imagine how Aronson's heart hopped in his bosom when Jupiter presented him to this goddess.
"I have seen you at our meetings, Mr. Aronson," she graciously observed. She had noticed him, then. He knew it before, but the assurance from her lips gave him measureless joy. But this joy swelled to rapture inexpressible, such as only the saints in the ninth heaven and happy lovers on earth are privileged to know, when she invited him to call upon her and pressed his hand a second time on bidding him adieu. The thrill of her fingertips did not die out all that day; but it was a week again (for Aronson was a bashful youth) before he presumed to accept her invitation.
His mother marveled why Saul furbished himself up so carefully that evening. He had risen from the supper table prematurely and spent exactly fifty-five minutes smoothing his hair, tidying his cravat and drawing on his new pair of gloves. When he went out, instead of soliciting admiration for this array, he seemed to avoid it.
As he drew toward the mansion whose door-plate still bore the name of the departed Ephraim Wolfe, an unwelcome surprise met Aronson. There in the doorway, silhouetted against the hall lamp, was the form which he knew to be Serena's. She was admitting a visitor—a youth. The door quickly closed and a rosy light came through the tinted curtains behind. But Aronson's spirits had sunk, his resolution departed. Instead of crossing the street, as he had planned to, and ringing the bell, with a little speech of greeting all prepared, he walked on to the next corner and irresolutely turned back.
This time a shadow fell on the white curtain of the front room. It was Serena rocking herself placidly in the rocking-chair. Every forward inclination brought her sweet profile into view, every backward one removed it. Her lips moved. She was conversing, doubtless, with the youth whose stolid shadow occupied the center of the opposite curtain. Eight times Saul Aronson passed and repassed that house-front before he could tear himself away and return home to divest himself downheartedly of all his finery.
Two days later, however, he saw Serena again; and she renewed the invitation. This time, when he approached, there was no hostile youth at the door. Serena herself admitted him to the portals of the paradise which she inhabited in common with Mrs. Wolfe and the seven boarders, and 10 o'clock had long ceased striking when, incoherent with ecstasy, Saul Aronson uttered his last lingering doorstep adieu and promised to return.
He never returned. As she informed Inspector McCausland, Serena had never looked on that lovelorn visage again.
This was how he came to break his promise: One Sunday afternoon a messenger came to the Aronson door with a request from Simon Rabofsky that Saul should favor him with a visit. The young man had misgivings, but he dared not disobey.
Up a squalid flight, into a dingy back room, Aronson took his way reluctantly. The clamor of voices died when he crossed the threshold and six pairs of inimical eyes, he thought, were lifted to his face. At a table in the midst sat Rabofsky, his yellowish earlocks dangling beneath his skull-cap and a great book spread open before him.