mpty glass. "_Ah! jeunesse, jeunesse!_"

V.

Tristrem descended the stair and hesitated a moment at the door of the
smoking-room. Near-by, at a small table, two men were drinking brandy.
He caught a fragment of their speech: it was about a woman. Beyond,
another group was listening to that story of the eternal feminine which
is everlastingly the same. Within, the air was lifeless and heavy with
the odor of cigars, but in the hall there came through the wide portals
of the entrance the irresistible breath of a night in May.

Tristrem turned and presently sauntered aimlessly out of the club and up
the avenue. Before him, a man was loitering with a girl; his arm was in
hers, and he was whispering in her ear. A cab passed, bearing a couple
that sat waist-encircled devouring each other with insatiate eyes. And
at Twenty-third Street, a few shop-girls, young and very pretty, that
were laughing conspicuously together, were joined by some clerks, with
whom they paired off and disappeared. At the corner, through the
intersecting thoroughfares came couple after couple, silent for the most
part, as though oppressed by the invitations of the night. Beyond, in
the shadows of the Square, the benches were filled with youths and
maidens, who sat hand-in-hand, oblivious to the crowd that circled in
indolent coils about them. The moon had not yet risen, but a leash of
stars that night had loosed glowed and trembled with desire. The air was
sentient with murmurs, redolent with promise. The avenues and the
adjacent streets seemed to have forgotten their toil and to swoon
unhushed in the bewitchments of a dream of love.

Tristrem found himself straying through its mazes and convolutions.
Whichever way he turned there was some monition of its presence. From a
street-car which had stayed his passage he saw the conductor blow a kiss
to a hurrying form, and through an open window of Delmonico's he saw a
girl with summer in her eyes reach across the table at which she sat and
give her companion's hand an abrupt yet deliberate caress.

Tristrem continued his way, oppressed. He was beset by an insidious
duscholia. He felt as one does who witnesses a festival in which there
is no part for him. The town reeked with love as a brewery reeks with
beer. The stars, the air, the very pavements told of it. It was
omnipresent, and yet there was none for him.

He tried to put it from him and think of other things. Of Jones, for
instance. Why ha