"It is a bit of the Middle Ages," said Orson, "look at those horses! Aren't they delightfully slender? And the paint! Do you notice the paint? And the stories those plush seats down below us could tell! Think of the misers and the millionaires, the dowagers and the drabs, that have let these old stages bump them over Murray Hill! You can't have that feeling about a street-car, not one of the electric ones, at any rate. Do you know the story of the New Yorker who was trying to sleep in a first-class compartment on a French railway? There was a collision, and he was pitched ten feet onto a coal-heap. He said he thought he was at home and he was getting off the stage at Forty-Second street."
They were passing through the most frequented part of the avenue. Noted singers and famous players passed them; old beaux and fresh belles; political notabilities and kings of corruption. A famous leader of cotillions, a beauty whose profile vied with her Boston terriers for being her chief distinction, and a noted polo-player came upon the scene and vanished again. Vane and his companion gave, from time to time, little nods to right and left. Their friends stared at them a little, but that caused them no sorrow. Automobiles rushed by. They looked down upon them, lofty in their ruined tower.
"As a show," said Vane, "it is admirably arranged. It moves with a beautiful precision. There is nothing hurried about it; the illusion of life is nearly complete. Some of them, I suppose, really are alive?"
"I am not sure," she answered, gravely. "Sometimes I think they merely move because there is a button being pressed somewhere; a button we cannot see, and that they spend their lives hiding from us."
"I dare say you are right. In the words of Fay Templeton, 'I've been there and I know.' I have made my little detours: but the lane had, thank fortune, a turning."
She saw through his playfulness, and her eyes went up to his in a sympathy—oh, it made him reel for sweetness.
"I am glad," she said, simply.
"But we are getting serious again," he remonstrated, "that would never do. Have we not sworn to be children? Let us pretend—let us pretend!" He looked at the grey roofs, the spires oozing from the hill to the sky. He looked at the grey dream beside him: so grey, so fair, so crowned with the hue of the sun before the world had made him so brazen. "Let us pretend," he went on, after a sigh, "that we are bound for the open road, and that we are to come to an inn, and that we will order something to eat. We—"
"Oh," she laughed, "you men, you men! Always something to eat!"
"You see, we are of coarse stuff; we cannot sup on star-dust, and dine on bubbles. But—this is only to pretend! An imaginary meal is sometimes so much more fun than a real one. At a real one, you see, I would have to try to eat, and I could not spend the whole time looking at you, and watching the sunshine on your hair, and the lilies—" He caught his breath sharply, with a little clicking noise. "Dear God," he whispered, "the lilies again! And I had never seen them until now."