by throngs rising out of the earth
itself. There was a vivid color running like ribbons through the
crowds, for it was nearly nine o'clock and the doors of offices and
shops and business houses were open to women as to men. Overhead a
yellow sun shone in a pale filmy sky and the air was both warm and
sharp. The doves were circling and settling.

The prize-fighters had taken their prowess elsewhere, and a circus had
come to Madison Square Garden. Clavering had heard the roar of lions
in the night. A far different crowd would stand under the arcade in a
few hours, but the peanut venders would ply their trade, and a little
booth for candies and innocuous juices had been erected in an alcove in
the front wall, presided over by a plump pretty blonde. She alternated
"jollying" and selling with quiet intervals of beading a bag,
undisturbed either by ogling or the hideous noises of Twenty-sixth
Street.

In spite of his disappointment two nights before he found it impossible
to feel depressed in that gay spring sunshine. He did not believe in
the headache, but she had written him a charming note and he supposed
that a man must get accustomed to the caprices of women if he intended
to live with one. And a month from now they would be in the Dolomites,
and she would be his. Let her have her caprices. He had his own.
There were times when he didn't want to see her.

Moreover, he was still too jubilant over his play to feel depressed for
long over anything; the warm and constantly manifested enthusiasm of
his friends had kept his spirits from suffering any natural reaction.
Their demand for his companionship was almost peremptory, and his
thoughts turned to them as he stood on his balcony looking down on the
waning throngs: the great stone buildings were humming like hives, and
figures were passing busily to and fro behind the open windows. It
astonished him a little. True, it was his first play and he was very
popular. But he had a vague uneasy idea they were overdoing it. They
talked of nothing else: his play, his brilliant future, his sure place
in the crack regiment "if he hung on"; and they insisted that he must
also express himself at least once through the medium of the novel.
The great New York novel had yet to be written. They fairly dinned his
gifts into his ears, until he was almost sick of them, and wondered if
Mary were not also. She had seen a good deal of the Sophisticates
lately, and from what she