is.

June meanwhile had come and gone. Summer with a frenzy quasi-maniacal
had battened on the town. It is said that the hottest place in the
world is a port on the Persian Gulf. But it is wrong to believe
everything we hear. When New York decides to be hot, the temperature
of the Persian port must be agreeable by comparison.

One fetid noon Annandale fled. When he stopped it was at Narragansett.

Before August comes and with it the mob, Narragansett is charming.
There is a mile of empty hotels, a stretch of sand fine as face
powder, a heaving, heavenly desert of blue and an atmosphere charged
with ozone and desire.

In August the hotels are packed. The stretch of sand is a stage. Every
day a ballet is given there. The coryphees are the prettiest girls in
the world--girls from Baltimore, girls from Philadelphia, girls from
everywhere, girls with the Occident in their eyes and lips that say
"Drink me."

At high noon, from the greenroom of the bath-houses, Sweet-and-twenty
floats down, clasps the sea to the hum of harps, breasts the waves to
the laugh of brass and re-emerges to the sound of trumpets.

After the dip, other diversions. Primarily flirtations on the lawns;
later, polo at the Country Club; at night, dancing in the ballrooms,
more flirtations on the galleries of the Casino, supper on the terrace
below.

The terrace resembles, or, more exactly, on this particular summer did
resemble, a roof garden on the ground floor. From a kiosk a band of
Hungarians distributed selections of popular rot, sometimes their own
delirious czardas. There, circled by variegated lights, fanned by the
violins, girls and men sat beneath the high, wide, flowerful umbrellas
of Japan.

Sometimes some of them, wearying of that, wandered into silences and
shadows and lingered there, occupied with the crops, with strikes and
other subjects of national interest which young people always discuss
when holding hands in the dark.

To Newport, which squats disdainfully over the way, this is all too
free and easy. To Annandale, it was distressing. Everywhere there was
love, yet none for him. He had come to the Pier, as Narragansett is
locally termed, because of Newport's propinquity. If Sylvia so much as
signaled he could join her at once.

As yet no signaling was apparent. In its place was an influx of a
reflection of fashion. The influx made Annandale swear. He hated to be
seen stalking moodily about. He hated still more to have the r