"

CHAPTER XIV

From the Plaza upward, the blank stare of the avenue was awakening into
renewed signs of habitation. Burglar-proof doors had come down and
boarded windows had yielded to curtained sashes. Already in the park the
trees were turning. Banners of crimson, yellow and burgundy flaunted
where the foliage had been sunburned and heat-corroded. The walks and
Mall had for scorching weeks been a breathing refuge, and the
sheep-pasture a sleeping place, for shirt-sleeved men who panted like
dogs. Haggard women and sunken-cheeked children--all heat-fagged and
exhausted--had held possession; but now the bridle-path echoed to
hoof-beats, and smartly togged equestrians galloped there, while along
the driveways droned a purr of motors.

The sun, which had assaulted, blighted and killed, now caressed a
revived city, for autumn had come with her clarifying elixirs and her
fever-cooling frosts.

Shop windows, freshly decked, tempted the passerby with foretastes of
the season's styles in gowns and hats and furs. All was color and
sparkle and activity. Soft tones awoke at sunset on old and seasoned
walls. Gilt street signs blazed and shaft-like buildings stood out in
splintered strips of a dozen hues against skies that were unsullied
turquoise.

In the veins of Hamilton Burton, as he motored up-town, a heady
exhilaration mounted like wine. As his car bowled up the avenue he
watched the human mosaic, and the drive seemed a progress through
Bagdad. He was finding it all the city of his dreams:

"--a city blazoned like a missal book,
Black with oaken gables, carven and enscrolled.
Every street a colored page: every sign a hieroglyph,
Dusky with enchantments: a city paved with gold."

Then as he entered his own house he remembered. Tonight he must go to
the opera and the prospect bored him. To Paul, of course, it was as wine
to the drunkard, but to Hamilton it meant a tedious evening. It was in a
way a duty and one of his few concessions to Society's requirements. Had
it not been written of another great figure, "the Emperor sat in his box
that night?" He would leave early and later in the evening he could
console himself with a matter of greater importance.

Yet when he arrived at the Metropolitan he forgot to be bored--until the
overture ended, and Music was enthroned in the place of Fashion.

Here at the opera each moment, so long as the house-lights blazed,
brought its own tribute of fla