s influence radiate. And he had felt very cold, as a guilty man may
feel who hugs his secret. And the huge theater had surely leaned over,
leaned down, filled suddenly with a sinister purpose, to crush him into
the dust.

"Claude!"

"Here I am!"

"What a time you've been! We--are you very tired?"

"Not a bit. Come along!"

They went out into the corridor lined with marble, stepped into a lift,
shot down, and passed through the vestibule to the street where a
taxi-cab was waiting. A young man stood on the pavement, and while
Charmian was getting in he spoke to Claude.

"Mr. Claude Heath, I believe?"

"Yes."

"I represent--"

"Very sorry I can't wait. I have to go to the theater."

He sprang in, and the taxi turned to the right into Fifth Avenue, and
rushed toward Central Park. A mountain of lights towered up on the left
where the Plaza invaded the starless sky. The dark spaces of the Park
showed vaguely on the right, as the cab swung round. In front gleamed
the golden and sleepless eyes of the Broadway district. The sharp frosty
air quivered with a thousand noises. Motors hurried by in an unending
procession, little gleaming worlds, each holding its group of strangers,
gazing, gesticulating, laughing, intent on some unknown errand. The
pavements were thronged with pedestrians, muffled to the ears and
walking swiftly. The taxi-cab, caught in the maze of traffic, jerked as
the chauffeur applied the brakes, and slowed down almost to walking
pace. Under a lamp Claude saw a colored woman wearing a huge pink hat.
She seemed to be gazing at him, and her large lips parted in a smile. In
an instant she was gone. But Claude could not forget her. In his
excitement and fatigue he thought of her as a great goblin woman, and
her smile was a terrible grin of bitter sarcasm stretching across the
world. Charmian and Alston were talking unweariedly. Claude did not hear
what they were saying. He saw snowflakes floating down between the
lights, strangely pure and remote, lost wanderers from some delicate
world where the fragile things are worshipped. And, with a strange
emotion, his heart turned to the now remote children of his imagination,
those children with whom he had sat alone by his wood fire on lonely
evenings, when the pale blue of the flames had struck on his eyes like
the soft notes of a flute on his ears, those children with whom he had
kept long vigils and sometimes seen the dawn. How far they had retreated
from h