“We’ll go back to the Empire,” Westland decided. “Ever been there? Well, it’s worth seeing, too—perhaps more than once. The Johnnies’ll be out in extraordinary force, I’m afraid, but then you ought to see them too, I suppose. It takes all sorts to make a world—and the world is what you’ve come out to look at. Let me get the tickets—or, well, if you insist—ask for the promenade.” It was indeed a novel spectacle, which smote and confused his eyes, rather than revealed itself to them, when Christian found himself inside. The broad, low, rounded promenade was so crowded with people that at first sight walking about seemed wholly impracticable, but Dicky stepped confidently into the jumbled throng and began moving through it, apparently with ease, and the other followed him. They made their way to the end, where a man in uniform guarded a staircase; then, turning, they elbowed along back to the opposite end of the half-circle. This gained, there was nothing in Dicky’s thoughts, seemingly, but to repeat the performance indefinitely. Their progress was of a necessity slow. On the inner side a dense wall of backs and high hats rendered hopeless any notion of seeing the stage below. Christian, struggling after his guide, wondered what else there was to see.
After a time it became obvious to him that the women who formed so large an element of the lazily shifting crowd were also the occasion of its being. They walked about, looking the men in the face with a cold, free, impassive scrutiny upon which, even if he had never seen it before, intuition would have fixed a label for him. Other women, from the plush seats on the outer edge of the circle, bent upon the whole moving mass of promenaders the same stoical, inscrutable gaze. The range of age among them did not seem extended to his uninformed glance. In years they were apparently all about alike. Some, indeed, had fresher faces and smoother skins than others, but when the eyes were considered a certain indefinable equality was insisted upon in them all. Their toilets were often striking in effect, and especially their hats—exaggerating both in breadth of brim, and in the height and bulk of the edifice of plumes above, the prevalent fashion in such matters—were notable to the spectator; but Christian found himself, upon consideration, more interested in their eyes than in anything else.
A certain stony quality in this stereotyped gaze of theirs suggested a parallel to his memory; he had seen precisely that same cool, unruffled, consciously unconscious stare in princesses who had looked at him without beholding him in the far-away days of his life about the hotels of the Riviera. It was very curious, he thought—this incongruous resemblance. But a little closer analysis showed that the likeness was but partial. These ladies of the promenade could look about them with the imperturbability of princesses, it was true, but only so long as they saw nothing which concerned them immediately. Nay, now he could discern beneath the surface of this passionless perlustration a couched vigilance of attention, which ever and again flashed uppermost with electric swiftness. When this mercurial change came, one saw the temperament mapped out like a landscape under the illumination of lightning. There gleamed forth expectancy, dread, joy, irritability, fun, dislike or wistful hope—whatever the mood of the instant yielded—with a force of intensity almost startling. Then, as quickly as it came, the look might vanish; even if it flickered on, the briefest interval of repose brought back again the watchful, dispassionate, hardened regard.
“Have you had enough of this?” Dicky asked, with an implication of weariness in his tone.
Christian, halting, took slow and bewildered cognizance of the fact that he had been going from one end of the promenade to the other for a very long time. Insensibly, at some period of the experience, he had taken the lead from his companion, and had been dragging him about in his wake.
“It is very interesting,” was the vague excuse he offered to Dicky, and even more to himself.
A sofa just beside them was for the moment unoccupied. Christian seated himself with the air of one physically tired out. “Ought we not to order drinks?” he asked his companion, who stood over him, looking down somewhat doubtfully.
“Oh, dear, no—not here!” Dicky replied, with conviction. “It’s nearly closing time—and we’ll go over to the club for half an hour—where we know our tipple. Shall we run along now?”
“No—sit down here,” said Christian. He spoke with the authority of a profound emotion, that glowed in his eyes and quivered on his lips. Westland obeyed him, pretending to a nonchalance which his mistrustful glance belied.
“This is all very extraordinary to me,” Christian continued, in a low, strenuous voice. He spoke with even more than his wonted fluency. “It catches hold of me. It fills my mind with new thoughts. There is something in the very air here—”