: fledgling young men making believe to be haughty to
cover their dreadful symptoms, the mask itself thus revealing what it
seeks to conceal; timid young ladies, likewise treacherously exposed by
their defenses; and very different ladies, but in similar case, being
retouched ladies, tinted ladies; and ladies who know that they are
pretty at first sight, ladies who chat with some obscured companion only
to offer the public a treat of graceful gestures; and poor ladies
making believe to be rich ladies; and rich ladies making believe to be
important ladies; and many other sorts of conscious ladies. And men--ah,
pitiful!--pitiful the wretch whose hardihood has involved him in cruel
and unusual great gloss and unsheltered tailed coat. Any man in his
overcoat is wrapped in his castle; he fears nothing. But to this hunted
creature, naked in his robin's tail, the whole panorama of the Avenue is
merely a blurred audience, focusing upon him a vast glare of derision;
he walks swiftly, as upon fire, pretends to careless sidelong interest
in shop-windows as he goes, makes play with his unfamiliar cane only to
be horror-stricken at the flourishings so evoked of his wild gloves; and
at last, fairly crawling with the eyes he feels all over him, he must
draw forth his handkerchief and shelter behind it, poor man, in the
dishonourable affectation of a sneeze!

Piquant contrast to these obsessions, the well-known expression of
Talbot Potter lifted him above the crowd to such high serenity his face
might have been that of a young Pope, with a dash of Sydney Carton. His
glance fixed itself, in its benign detachment, upon the misty top of the
Flatiron, far down the street, and the more frequent the plainly visible
recognitions among the north-bound people, the less he seemed aware
of them. And yet, whenever the sieving current of pedestrians brought
momentarily face to face with him a girl or woman, apparently civilized
and in the mode, who obviously had never seen him before and seemed not
to care if it should be her fate never to repeat the experience, Talbot
Potter had a certain desire. If society had established a rule that
all men must instantly obey and act upon every fleeting impulse, Talbot
Potter would have taken that girl or woman by the shoulders and said to
her: "What's the matter with you!"

At Forty-second Street he crossed over, proceeded to the middle of the
block, and halted dreamily on the edge of the pavement, his back to