irst surged in upon him at twenty. The very fact that he held
even a temporary solution to his barren days was enough. In the joy of
his almost august scorn of circumstance he forgot the minor difficulties
which still lay before him.

He turned aside from the direct course to his room into Broadway. It was
the last of May and early evening. The month revealed itself in the warm
night sky and the buoyant spirits of those below its velvet richness.
Spring was in the air--a stimulation as of etherialized champagne. The
spirit of adventure, the spirit of renaissance, the spirit of creation
was abroad once more. Not a cranny in even this sprawling section of
denaturalized earth but thrilled for the time being with budding hopes,
sap-swollen courage, and bright, colorful dreams. Walking beneath the
spitting glare of the arc-lights, through the golden mist flooding from
the store windows, Donaldson hazily saw again the careless unburdened
world of his early youth. He caught the spirit of Broadway and all
Broadway means in the spring. It was a marionette world where
marionettes dance their gayest. Yesterday this would have been to him
nothing but a dead bioscope picture; now, though he still sat an onlooker
in the pit, it was a living human drama at which he gazed.

Two dark-haired grisettes passed him, their cheeks aglow and their eyes
dancing. They appeared so full of life, so very gay, that he turned to
glance back at them. He found the eyes of the prettier one upon him; she
had turned to look at him. It was long since even so trifling an
intrigue as this had quickened his life.

As a matter of fact Donaldson always attracted more interest in feminine
eyes than, in his self engrossment, he was ever aware. Even in his shiny
blue serge suit, baggy at the knees and sagging at the shoulders, even in
his shabby hat, he carried himself with an air. Two things about his
person were always as fine and immaculate as though he were a gentleman
of some fortune, his linen and his shoes. But in addition to such slight
externals Donaldson, although not a large man, had good shoulders, a
well-poised head, and walked with an Indian stride from the hips that
made him noticeable among the flat-footed native New Yorkers. He might
have been mistaken for an ambitious actor of the younger school; even for
a forceful young cleric, save for the fact that he smoked his cigarette
with evident satisfaction.

He followed an aimless