tisfaction, but neither is it starvation!
Probably a real interview with a living, present lover, would not have
given to Pepeeta that intense, though poignant, happiness which
transfigured her face when she came forth into the daylight world, and
which subdued and softened the noisy welcome of the boy.

CHAPTER XXVI.

OUT OF THE SHADOW

"Until the day break and the shadows flee away."

--Song of Solomon.

In due time the vessel upon which David had embarked arrived at her
destination, the city of New York, and the lonely traveler stepped forth
unnoticed and unknown into the metropolis of the New World.

With, an instinct common to all adventurers, he made his way to the
Bowery, that thoroughfare whose name and character dispute the fame of
the Corso, the Strand and the Rue de Rivoli.

Amid its perpetual excitements and boundless opportunities for
adventure, David resumed the habits formed during that period of life
upon which the doors had now closed. His reputation had followed him,
and the new scenes, the physical restoration during the long voyage, the
necessity of maintaining his fame, all conspired to help him take a
place in the front rank of the devotees of the gambling rooms.

He did his best to enter into this new life with enthusiasm, but it had
no power to banish or even to allay his grief. He therefore spent most
of his time in wandering about among the wonders of the swiftly-growing
city, observing her busy streets, her crowded wharfs, her libraries,
museums and parks. This moving panorama temporarily diverted his
thoughts from that channel into which they ever returned, and which they
were constantly wearing deeper and deeper, and so helped him to
accomplish the one aim of his wretched life, which was to become even
for a single moment unconscious of himself and of his misery.

He had long ceased to ponder the problems of existence, for his
philosophy of life had reached its goal at the point where he was too
tired and broken-hearted to think. He could hardly be said to "live" any
longer, and his existence was scarcely more than a vegetation. Like a
somnambulist, he received upon the pupils of his eye impressions which
did not awaken a response in his reason.

If any general conceptions at all were being formed he was unconscious
of them. What he really thought of the phenomena of life upon which he
thus blindly stared, he could not have definitely told; but in some
vague way