"The morning," Orson Vane had once declared, in a moment of revelation, "is God's, and the night is man's." He was speaking, of course, of the town. In the severe selectiveness that had grown upon him after much rout and riot through other lands, he pretended that the town was the only spot on the map. Certainly this particular morning seemed to bear out something of this saying; it swept away the smoke and the taint, the fever and the flush of the night before; the visions of limelights and glittering crystals and enmillioned vice fled before the gust of ozone that came pouring into the streets. Before night, to be sure, man would have asserted himself once more; the pomp and pageant of the primrose path would have ousted, with its artificial charm, the clean, sweet freshness of the morning.
The grim houses on upper Fifth avenue put on semblance of life reluctantly that morning. Houses take on the air of their inmates; these houses wore their best manner only under artificial lights. Surly grooms and housemaids went muttering and stumbling about the areas. Sad-faced wheelmen flashed over the asphalt, cursing the sprinkling carts. It was not too early for the time-honored preoccupation of the butcher cart, which consists of turning corners as if the world's end was coming. Pallid clubmen strode furtively in the growing sunshine. To them, as to the whole town, the sun and its friend, the breeze, came as a tonic and a cure.
So strange a thing is the soul of man that Orson Vane, riding towards the Park that morning, caught only vague, fleeting impressions of the actual beauty of the day. He simply wondered, every foot of the way to McGowan's Pass, whether Miss Vanlief played golf. The first thing he said to her after they had exchanged greetings, was:
"Of course you golf?"
She looked at him in alarm. There was something—something, but what was it?—in his voice, in his eye. She had expected a reference to the day before, to their infantile escapade on the roof of the coach. Instead, this banale, this stupid, this stereotyped phrase! Her flowerlike face clouded; she gave her mare the whip.
"No," she called out, "I cannot bear the game." His horse caught the pace with difficulty; the groom was left far out of sight, beyond a corner. But the diversion had not touched Vane's trend of thought at all.
"Oh," he assured her, when the horses were at an amble again, "it's one of those things one has to do. Some things have to be done, you know; society won't stand for anything less, you know, oh, no. I have to play golf, you know; part of my reputation."
"I didn't know," she faltered. She tried to remember when Orson Vane had ever been seen on either the expert or the duffer list at the golf matches.
"Oh, yes; people expect it of me. If I don't play I have to arrange tournaments. Handicapping is great fun; ever try it? No? You should. Makes one feel quite like a judge at sessions. Oh, there's nothing like golf. Not this year, at least. Next year it may be something else. I may have to take to polo or tennis. One is expected to show the way, you know; a man in my position—" He looked at her with a kind of 'bland, blunt, clumsy egoism, that made her wonder where was the Orson Vane of yesterday. This riddle began to sadden her. Perhaps it was true, as she had heard somewhere, that the man was mentally unbalanced; that he had his—well, his bad days. She sighed. She had looked forward to this ride in the Park; she admitted that to herself. Not in a whole afternoon spent with Luke Moncreith had she felt such happy childishness stirring in her as yesterday, in the hour with Orson Vane. And now—She sighed.
The hum of an approaching automobile reached them, the glittering vehicle proclaiming its progress in that purring stage whisper that is still the inalienable right of even the newest "bubble" machine. The coat worn by the smart young person on the seat would have shocked the unenlightened, for that sparkling, tingling morning it struck the exact harmonious note of artifice.