infully traversing block after block, begging of all whom she met (for
she no longer made any distinction among the passers-by).

"Say, say, den, blease hellup a boor womun."

"Mammy, mammy, I'm hungry."

It was Friday night, between seven and eight. The great deserted avenue
was already dark. A sea fog was scudding overhead, and by degrees
descending lower. The warmth was of the meagerest, and the street lamps,
birds of fire in cages of glass, fluttered and danced in the prolonged
gusts of the trade wind that threshed and weltered in the city streets
from off the ocean.

*****

Presley entered the dining-room of the Gerard mansion with little Miss
Gerard on his arm. The other guests had preceded them--Cedarquist with
Mrs. Gerard; a pale-faced, languid young man (introduced to Presley
as Julian Lambert) with Presley's cousin Beatrice, one of the twin
daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Cedarquist; his brother Stephen, whose
hair was straight as an Indian's, but of a pallid straw color, with
Beatrice's sister; Gerard himself, taciturn, bearded, rotund, loud of
breath, escorted Mrs. Cedarquist. Besides these, there were one or two
other couples, whose names Presley did not remember.

The dining-room was superb in its appointments. On three sides of the
room, to the height of some ten feet, ran a continuous picture, an oil
painting, divided into long sections by narrow panels of black oak. The
painting represented the personages in the Romaunt de la Rose, and
was conceived in an atmosphere of the most delicate, most ephemeral
allegory. One saw young chevaliers, blue-eyed, of elemental beauty
and purity; women with crowns, gold girdles, and cloudy wimples; young
girls, entrancing in their loveliness, wearing snow-white kerchiefs,
their golden hair unbound and flowing, dressed in white samite, bearing
armfuls of flowers; the whole procession defiling against a background
of forest glades, venerable oaks, half-hidden fountains, and fields of
asphodel and roses.

Otherwise, the room was simple. Against the side of the wall unoccupied
by the picture stood a sideboard of gigantic size, that once had adorned
the banquet hall of an Italian palace of the late Renaissance. It was
black with age, and against its sombre surfaces glittered an array of
heavy silver dishes and heavier cut-glass bowls and goblets.

The company sat down to the first course of raw Blue Point oysters,
served upon little pyramids of shaved ice, and the two but