of emergency
men with pick and shovel struggled with the drifts in Fifth Avenue and
Broadway. Then the storm ended at daybreak.

All day long squadrons of white gulls wheeled and sailed in the sky
above the snowy expanse of park where the great, rectangular sheets of
water glimmered black in their white setting. As she sat at her desk she
could see them drifting into and out of the gray squares of sky framed
by her window-panes. Two days ago she had seen them stemming the sky
blasts, heralding the coming of unfelt tempests, flapping steadily
through the fragrant rain. Now, the false phantom which had mimicked
spring turned on the world the glassy glare of winter, stupefying hope,
stunning desire, clogging the life essence in all young, living things.
The first vague summons, the restlessness of awakening aspiration, the
first delicate, indrawn breath, were stilled to deathly immobility.

Sylvia, at her escritoire, chin cradled in her hollowed hand,
sat listlessly inspecting her mail--the usual pile of bills and
advertisements, social demands and interested appeals, with here and
there a frivolous note from some intimate to punctuate the endless
importunities.

Her housekeeper had come and gone; the Belwether establishment could jog
through another day. Various specialists, who cared for the health and
beauty of her body, had entered and made their unctuous exits. The major
had gone to Tuxedo for the week's end; her maid had bronchitis; two
horses required the veterinary, and the kitchen range a new water-back.

Cards had come for the Caithness function; cards for young Austin
Wadsworth's wedding to a Charleston girl of rumoured beauty; Caragnini
was to sing for Mrs. Vendenning; a live llama, two-legged, had consented
to undermine Christianity for Mrs. Pyne-Johnson and her guests.

"Would Sylvia be ready for the inspection of imported head-gears to
harmonise with the gowns being built by Constantine?

"When--

"Would she receive the courteous agent of 'The Reigning Beauties of
Manhattan,' to arrange for her portrait and biographical sketch?

"When--

"Would she realise that Jefferson B. Doty could turn earth into heaven
for any young chatelaine by affixing to the laundry his anti-microbe
drying machine emitting sixty sterilised hot-air blasts in thirty
seconds, at a cost of one-tenth of one mill per blast?

"And when--"

But she turned her head, looking wearily across the room at the brightly
burning fire b