Since morning, the glowing warmth of the last summery stillness had slipped away unperceived. The wind in an hour had gone round to the north, and from each whipping banner threaded against the sky one felt the whistling onrush of winter. In the air there was something suspended, a melancholy resounding profoundly, penetrating the soul of the multitude. The gray sluggish currents in the thoroughfare quickened, stirring more restlessly, apprehensive, caught unawares. Little gusts of wind, scouts heralding the chill battalions piling up on the horizon, drove through the city clefts, sporting stray bits of paper to the rooftops, in turbulent dusty, swooping flight, uncovering heads and rolling hats like saucers down the blinded streets. Then suddenly the gusts flattened out. A stillness succeeded, but grim, permeating, monstrous; and above the winter continued to advance.
She felt something in all this—something ominous, prophetic, vaguely troubling, and being troubled, sought to put it from her. She began to dramatize another mood. About her she felt the city she adored: the restaurants, the theaters, the great hotels, the rocket-rise of the white Times building, towering like a pillar of salt in accursed Sodom. But her mind did not penetrate to ugliness. The febrile activity, the glistening surface of pleasure, the sensation of easy luxurious flight awoke in her the intoxication of enjoyment. She adored it, this city whom so many curse, whose luxuries and pleasures opened so facilely to her nod, whose conquest had borne so little difficulty.
She forgot the unease that lay in the air at the sight of the feverish restaurants where so often she had dipped in for adventure of the afternoon. The sight of the theaters, even, with their cold white globes above the outpouring matinée crowds, brought an impatience for the garlanded night, when elegant shadows would come, slipping into flaming portals, amid the flash of ankles, the scent of perfume, glances of women challenging the envy of the crowd.
The multitude churned about her, roaring down into the confusion of many currents: the multitude—the others—whom she felt so distant, so far below her. They were there, white of face, troubled, frowning, harassed, swelling onward to clamoring tasks, spying her with thousand-eyed envy; and everywhere darting in and out, dodging the gray contact of the mass, alert, light, skimming on like sea-gulls trailing their wings across the chafing ocean, the luxurious women of the city sped in rolling careless flight. She felt herself one of them, admiring and admired, glancing eagerly into tonneaus bright with laughter and fashion, deliciously registering the sudden analytical stare of women, or the disloyal tribute boldly telegraphed of men.
She had lunched with Sassoon, De Joncy, Massingale. She was a part of all this—of the Brahmin caste; and her little body rocking to the swooping turns, deliciously cradled, her eyes half closed, her nostrils drawing in this frantic air as if it were the breath of an enchanting perfume, she let her imagination go: already there by right, married to Massingale or Lindaberry—she saw not which quite clearly. Nor did it matter. Only she herself mattered.
"Riverside or park, Dodo?"
"Through the park," she said; and roused from her castle-building, she laughed at herself with a tolerant amused confusion.
"Good spirits, eh?"
"So-so!"
In the park there were fewer automobiles. She no longer had the feeling of the crowd pressing about her, claiming her for its own. There were no restaurants or climbing façades. There was the earth, bare, shivering, and the sky filled with the invader.