moment in a tenacious mind; with the
expression in Charmian's eyes at the end of the opera, Oxford Street by
night as he walked home, the spectral bunch of white roses on his table,
the furtive whisper of the letter of love to Charmian as it dropped in
the box, the watchful policeman, the noise of his heavy steps, the dying
of the moonlight on the leaded panes of the studio, the scent of the
earth as the dawn near drew.

Events and periods, and little details! And who or what had guided him
through the maze of them? And whither was he going? Whither and to what
was he hastening?

His marriage and the new life came back to him. He heard the maids
whispering together on the stairs in Kensington Square, and the sound of
the street organ in the frost. He saw the studio in Renwick Place,
Charmian coming in with books of poetry in her hands. There, had been
the beginning of that which had led to Algiers and now to New York, his
abdication. There, he had taken the first step down from the throne of
his own knowledge of himself.

He saw a gulf black beneath him.

But Charmian called:

"Claude, do make haste!"

He caught up hat and gloves and went out into the lobby. But even as he
went, with an extraordinary swiftness he reviewed the incidents of his
short time in America; the arrival in the cruel coldness of a winter
dawn; the immensity of the city's aspect seen across the tufted waters,
its towers--as they had seemed to him then--climbing into Heaven, its
voices companioning its towers; the throngs of pressmen and
photographers, who had gazed at him with piercing, yet not unkind, eyes,
searching him for his secrets; the meeting with Crayford and Crayford's
small army of helpers; publicity agents, business and stage managers,
conductors, producers, machinists, typewriters, box-office people, scene
painters, singers, instrumentalists. Their figures rushed across
Claude's mind with a vertiginous rapidity. Their faces flashed by
grimacing. Their hands beckoned him on in a mad career. And he saw the
huge theater, a monster of masonry, with a terrific maw which he--he of
all men!--was expected to fill, a maw gaping for human beings, gaping
for dollars. What a coldness it had struck into him, as he stood for the
first time looking into its dimness as into the dimness of some gigantic
cavern. In that moment he had realized, or had at least partially
realized, the meaning of a tremendous failure, and how far the circles
of it