Margarita's Soul: The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty

THEY CROONED TOGETHER THERE, THE WOMAN, THE CHILD AND THE BIRDS
O I have seen a fair mermaid, That sang beside a lonely sea, And now her long black hair she'll braid, And be my own good wife to me.
O woe's the day you saw the maid, And woe's the song she sang the sea, In hell her long black hair she'll braid, For ne'er a soul at all has she!
Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.

Roger Bradley was walking up Broadway. This fact calls sharply for comment, for he had not done it in years; the thoroughfare was intolerable to him. But one of its impingements upon a less blatant avenue had caught him napping and he found himself entangled in a mesh of theatre dribblings, pool-room loungers, wine-touts and homeward bent women of the middle, shopping class. Being there, he scorned to avail himself of the regularly recurring cross streets, but strode along, his straight, trim bulk, his keen, judicial profile—a profile that spoke strong of the best traditions of American blood—marking him for what he was among a crowd not to be matched, in its way, upon the Western Continent.
At the second slanting of the great, tawdry lane he bent with it and encountered suddenly a little knot of flustered women just descended from the elevated way that doubled the din and blare of the shrieking city. They were bundle-filled, voluble, dressed by any standards save those of their native city, far beyond their probable means and undoubted station. As they stopped unexpectedly and hesitated, damming the flood of hurrying citizens, Roger halted of necessity and stepped backward, but in avoiding them he bumped heavily against the person behind him. A startled gasp, something soft against his shoulder, the sharp edge of a projecting hat, told him that this person was a woman, and stepping sidewise into the shelter of a neighbouring news-stall, he raised his hat with a courtesy alien to the place and hour.
I beg your pardon, madam, he said, I trust I have not hurt you?