gleaming smile of amused
excitement. "They've made it look like cheap melodrama," he said to
himself; "and yet it's a good thing, the best thing I've ever done.
Yet they will vulgarize the whole idea with their infernal notions of
'what the public wants.' Morena is as bad as the rest of them!" He
expressed disgust, but underneath he was aglow with pride and
interest. "There's a performance to-night. I'll dine with Jasper. I'll
have to see Betty first...." His thoughts trailed off and he fell into
that hot-cold confusion, that uncomfortable scorching fog of mood. The
cab turned into Fifth Avenue and became a scale in the creeping
serpent of vehicles that glided, paused, and glided again past the
thronged pavements. Prosper contrasted everything with the grim
courage and high-pitched tragedy of France. He could not but wonder at
the detached frivolity of these money-spenders, these spinners in the
sun. How soon would the shadow fall upon them too and with what change
of countenance would they look up! To him the joyousness seemed almost
childish and yet he bathed his fagged spirit in it. How high the white
clouds sailed, how blue was the midwinter sky! How the buildings
towered, how quickly the people stepped! Here were the pretty painted
faces, the absurd silk stockings, the tripping, exquisitely booted
feet, the swinging walk, the tall, up-springing bodies of the women he
remembered. He regarded them with impersonal delight, untinged by any
of his usual cynicism.

It was late afternoon when Prosper, obedient to a telephone call from
Betty, presented himself at the door of Morena's house, just east of
the Park, off Fifth Avenue; a very beautiful house where the wealthy
Jew had indulged his passion for exquisite things. Prosper entered its
rich dimness with a feeling of oppression--that unanalyzed mood of hot
and cold feeling intensified to an almost unbearable degree. In the
large carved and curtained drawing-room he waited for Betty. The
tea-things were prepared; there would be no further need of service
until Betty should ring. Everything was arranged for an uninterrupted
tete-a-tete. Prosper stood near an ebony table, his shoulder
brushed by tall, red roses, and felt his nerves tighten and his pulses
hasten in their beat. "The tall child ... the tall child ..." he had
called her by that name so often and never without a swift and
stabbing memory of Joan, and of Joan's laughter which he had silenced.

He took out the