iar than the rows of
figures in his books down-town. He fitted them to such presences as
seemed to demand them as their right. He grew into a certain intimacy
with the slender trimly accoutred girls who held themselves so erectly
and wore their hair with such maidenly severity. They were so different
in appearance from all the women he had known or seen, and from the
languishing creatures in his mother's cherished _Book of Beauty_, that
he came to look upon them as a race apart, which they were; as something
not quite human, which was a slander. As they stalked along so briskly
in their tailor-made frocks, their cheeks and eyes brilliant with
health, the average observer would have likened them to healthy
high-bred young race-horses.

On the whole, however, Andrew gave the full measure of his admiration to
the women who took their exercise less violently. When the spring came,
and the Park was green, he would stand in the plaza, surrounded by its
great hotels, the deep rumble of the avenue behind him, forgetting even
the phalanxes of tramping girls, with their accessories of boys and
poodles. Before him were the wide gates of the Park, the green wooded
knolls rolling away--almost to his home in Harlem. Just beyond the gates
was a bend in the driveway, and he never tired of watching the stream of
carriages wind as from a cavern and roll out to the avenue. The vivid
background claimed as its own those superb traps with their dainty
burdens of women who held their heads so haughtily, whose plumage was so
brilliant. The horses glittered and pranced. The parasols fluttered like
butterflies above the flower-faces beneath. Webb would stand entranced,
bitterly thankful that there was such a scene for him to look upon,
choking back a sob that he had no part in it.

When summer came and Society flitted to Newport, that paradise in which
he only half believed, he was more lonely and glum than the loneliest
and glummest and most _blase_ clubman, who clung to his window because
he hated Newport and could not afford London. Quite accidentally, when
his infatuation was about three years old, he came into a singular
compensation. In the summer, during his ten days' vacation, when he was
tramping through the woods, he fell in with a party of Western people,
who manifested much interest in New York. To Andrew there was only one
New York, and with that his soul was identified. Insensibly, he began
to talk of New York Society as if it wer