ons, lilies of the valley--somehow vastly more
lovely and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow.
The Park itself was a wonderful stage winterpiece.

When he returned, the pause of the twilight had ceased and the tune of
the streets had changed. The snow was falling faster, lights streamed
from the hotels that reared their dozen stories fearlessly up into
the storm, defying the raging Atlantic winds. A long, black stream of
carriages poured down the avenue, intersected here and there by other
streams, tending horizontally. There were a score of cabs about the
entrance of his hotel, and his driver had to wait. Boys in livery were
running in and out of the awning stretched across the sidewalk, up and
down the red velvet carpet laid from the door to the street. Above,
about, within it all was the rumble and roar, the hurry and toss of
thousands of human beings as hot for pleasure as himself, and on every
side of him towered the glaring affirmation of the omnipotence of
wealth.

The boy set his teeth and drew his shoulders together in a spasm of
realization; the plot of all dramas, the text of all romances,
the nerve-stuff of all sensations was whirling about him like the
snowflakes. He burnt like a faggot in a tempest.

When Paul went down to dinner the music of the orchestra came floating
up the elevator shaft to greet him. His head whirled as he stepped into
the thronged corridor, and he sank back into one of the chairs against
the wall to get his breath. The lights, the chatter, the perfumes, the
bewildering medley of color--he had, for a moment, the feeling of
not being able to stand it. But only for a moment; these were his own
people, he told himself. He went slowly about the corridors, through
the writing rooms, smoking rooms, reception rooms, as though he were
exploring the chambers of an enchanted palace, built and peopled for him
alone.

When he reached the dining room he sat down at a table near a window.
The flowers, the white linen, the many-colored wineglasses, the gay
toilettes of the women, the low popping of corks, the undulating
repetitions of the _Blue Danube_ from the orchestra, all flooded Paul's
dream with bewildering radiance. When the roseate tinge of his champagne
was added--that cold, precious, bubbling stuff that creamed and foamed
in his glass--Paul wondered that there were honest men in the world at
all. This was what all the world was fighting for, he reflected; this
wa