icence. Twenty moons would not have been
noticed. Everything that could happen was happening by electricity. It
was Crystal Palace Fireworks, and the Lord Mayor's Show, and
Coronation, and Mafeking, and naval manoeuvres with searchlights, all
flashing and flaming, blazing and gyrating at the same time. Broadway
gleamed white as the north pole, jewelled with rainbow colours,
amazing rubies, emeralds, topazes, grouped in letters or forming
pictures on invisible frames rising high above tall buildings or
appearing on their facades.

Green sea waves billowed brightly, a giant cat winked golden eyes, two
brilliant boxers fought an endless round, a dazzling girl put on and
took off illuminated gloves; a darky's head, as big as a balloon, ate
a special brand of pickled melon; a blue umbrella opened and shut; a
great gilded basket dropped ruby roses (Buy them at Perrin Freres); a
Japanese Geisha, twice life-size, told you where to get kimonos; a
trout larger than a whale appeared and disappeared on a patent hook;
and above all, brighter than all, rose against the paling sky from
somewhere behind Broadway a pair of titanic hands.

These hands fascinated Win. They beckoned her gaze and held it. Slowly
they came up and drew attention to themselves, silently filching it
from Broadway's emblems of business success. The stranger in New York
stopped involuntarily as if hypnotized, watching for the ten colossal
outspread fingers to materialize on their unseen frames; to become
hands, with wrists and upraised arms; and then to drop out of sight,
like the last appeal for help of a drowning Atlas who had lost his
grip on the globe.

Yet this immense, arresting gesture was never the last. Three seconds
gone, then blazing back again, came fingers, hands, wrists, arms. And
on every one of the ten fingers (including thumbs) flashed a huge
ring, each different from the other in colour and design. Each ring
was adorned with a jewelled letter, and as the hands reached toward
the zenith the colour of the rings changed rapidly twice. It was
impossible to remove the eyes from this sign until the gesture pageant
had completed itself. To the lost dryad New York seemed dominated by
Peter Rolls's Hands.

CHAPTER VII

THE TWO PETERS

The hands of Peter Rolls!

They had Winifred Child's imagination in their grip. Sleeping and
waking, she saw the glitter of their rings. For on her first night in
New York Mr. Loewenfeld told her a story a