ter luncheon when pedestrians become numerous.
For his purpose they could not be very numerous; they must be
reasonably spaced apart.

And already a veritable stream of women had begun to flow down the
long, gentle slope, while a few, like fish, were stemming the current
by making progress against it. None of them was his "affair." Young,
old, short, tall, blond, brunette, they were without exception of the
class indiscriminately lumped as ladies. Since you couldn't go to the
devil because you had married a lady, even on the wild hypothesis that
one of these sophisticated beings would without introduction or
formality marry him, it would be better not to let himself in for the
absurdity of the proposal. When there was a break in the procession,
he darted across the street and made his way into the Park.

Here there was no one in sight as far as the path continued without a
bend. He was going altogether at a venture. Round the curve of the
woodland way there might swing at any second the sibyl who would point
his life downward.

He was aware, however, that in sibyls he had a preference. If she was
to send him to the devil, she must be of the type which he qualified
as a "drab." Without knowing the dictionary meaning of the word, he
felt that it implied whatever would contrast most revoltingly with
Barbara Walbrook. Seeing with her own eyes to what she had driven him,
her heart would be wrung. That was all he asked for, the wringing of
her heart. It might be a mad thing for him to punish himself so
terribly just to punish her, but he was mad anyhow. Madness gave him
the satisfaction which some men got from thrift, and others from
cleverness. He would keep the vow with which he had slipped out of
Miss Walbrook's drawing room. It was all that life had left for him.

That was, he wouldn't pick and choose. He would take them as they
came. He had not stipulated with himself that she must be a "drab." It
was only what he hoped. She must be the first woman he met who would
marry him. Age, appearance, refinement, vulgarity were not to be
considered. Picking and choosing on his part would only take his
destiny out of the hands of Fate, where he preferred that it should
lie.

Had any one passed him, he would have seemed the more perturbed
because of his being so well-dressed. He was one of the few New
Yorkers as careful of appearances as many Londoners. With the finish
that comes of studied selection in hat, stick, and gloves