lend their countenance to the singer's
occasion. His smile broadened--this was so characteristic of New York in
the eighties. How different it had been; but it was no better, he added
silently, now.

It was mid-August, and the air floating in through an open door was
ladened with the richness of ultra-luxuriant vegetation, the persistent,
metallic whirring of locusts, the mechanical repetition of katydids. One
of the owls that inhabited the old willow tree before the house cried
softly.... How different! He straightened up from the book open on his
knees, and the glass fell with a small clatter over his formal, starched
linen, swinging for an instant on its narrow ribbon. The unwavering lamp
light was deflected in green points through the emeralds of his studs.

The thought of bygone, gala nights of opera fastened on him with a
peculiar significance--suddenly they seemed symbolic of his lost youth.
Such tides of impassioned song, such poignant, lyric passion, such
tragic sacrifice and death, were all in the extravagant key of youth.
The very convention of opera, the glorified unreality of its language,
the romantic impossibility of its colour, the sparkling dress like the
sparkling voices and blue gardens and gilded halls, were the authentic
expression of the resplendent vagaries of early years.

The winter of eighty three and four; his first season of New York
music. The autumn before he had returned from the five years spent in
Europe, in Paris practically, with Bundy Provost, related to him by a
marriage in the past generation, through the Jannans. He had gone abroad
immediately after his graduation as a lawyer; and in the indolent
culture of the five Parisian years, he now realized, he had permanently
lost all hold on his profession. At his return he had drifted
imperceptibly into an existence of polite pleasure. It had been
different with Bundy; he had gone into the banking house of Provost,
lately established in New York; and, with the extraordinary pertinacity
and acumen sometimes developed by worldly and rich young men, he had
steadily risen to a place of financial importance. An opening had, of
course, been offered to Howat Penny when he had definitely decided not
to settle in Philadelphia, where the Pennys had always been associated,
and pursue the law. And, at first, he had occupied a desk in the Provost
counting rooms. But he had soon grown discontented, he disliked routine
and a clerk's condition; and, af