him to colors too pronounced to harmonize with
his own ideas. Still he appreciated the fact that Bobby was indulging
in almost as many thrills as though he were actually holding the purse.
This became especially true when Donaldson allowed the boy to purchase
for himself such articles as struck his fancy. As a matter of fact
there was not so much difference in the present point of view of the
man and the boy; it was to them both a fairy episode.

They lounged from one store to another, enjoying the lights, the
colors, the beautiful cloths, choosing where they would with all the
abandon of those with genii to serve them. Donaldson was indulging
something more fundamental than his enjoyment of the things themselves;
this was his first taste, as well as Bobby's, of gratifying desires
without worry of the reckoning. His wishes were now stripped to bare
wants. He was free of the skeleton hand of the Future which had so
long held him prisoner--which had frightened him into depriving himself
of all life's garnishings until his condition had been reduced to one
of monastic simplicity without the monk's redeeming inspiration. He
was no longer mocked by the thin cry of "Wait!"

He moved about this gay store world with a sense of kingly superiority.
He listened indulgently to the idle chatter of the shop girls, the
rattle of the cash boxes, and smiled at the seriousness with which this
business of selling was pressed. What a tremendous ado they made of
living, with year after year, month after month, day after day, looming
endlessly before them! Not an act which they performed, even to the
tying up of a bundle, ended in itself, but was one of an endless vista
of acts. The burden of the Future was upon them. They drooped, poor
bloodless things, beneath the weight of the relentless days before
them. And so this faded present was all their future, too. They saw
nothing of the joyous world which spun around him bright as a new coin.
They were dead, because of the weary days to come, to the magical
brilliancy of the big arc-lights, to the humor and action of the crowd,
to the quick shifts of colors; they were stupefied by this great flux
of life which swept them on day after day to another day. Often
unexpressed, this, but felt dumbly below the chatter and dry laughter.
They waited, waited, circling about in a gray maelstrom until the grave
sucked them in. He himself had been in the clutch of it. But that was
yesterday