And then everywhere, also, the brighter hue and exotic cut of foreign uniforms was apparent––splashes of gayer tints amid khaki and sober civilian garb––the beautiful garance and horizon-blue of French officers; the familiar “brass hat” of the British; the grey-blue and maroon of Italians. And there were stranger uniforms in varieties inexhaustible––the schapska-shaped head-gear of Polish officers, the beret of Czecho-Slovaks. And everywhere, too, the gay and well-known red pom-pon bobbed on the caps of French blue-jackets, and British marines stalked in pairs, looking every inch the soldier with their swagger sticks and their vizorless forage-caps.
Always, it seemed to Palla, there was military music to be heard above the roar of traffic––sometimes the drums and bugles of foreign detachments, arrived in aid of “drives” and loans of various sorts.
Ambulances painted grey and bright blue, and driven by smartly uniformed young women, were everywhere.
And to women’s uniforms there seemed no end, ranging all the way from the sober blue of the army nurse and the pretty white of the Red Cross, to bizarre but smart effects carried smartly by well set up girls representing scores of service corps, some invaluable, some of doubtful utility.
Eagle huts, canteens, soldiers’ rest houses, Red Cross quarters, clubs, temporary barracks, peppered the city. Everywhere the service flags were visible, 139 also, telling their proud stories in five-pointed symbols––sometimes tragic, where gold stars glittered.
Never had New York seemed to contain so many people; never had the overflow so congested avenue and street, circle and square, and the wretchedly inadequate and dirty street-car and subway service.
And into the heart of it all went Palla, engulfed in the great tides of Fifth Avenue, drifting into quieter back-waters to east and west, and sometimes caught and tossed about in the glittering maelstrom of Broadway when she ventured into the theatre district.
Opera, comedy, musical show and cinema interested her; restaurant and cabaret she had evaded, so far, but what most excited and fascinated her was the people themselves––these eager, restless moving millions swarming through the city day and night, always in motion under blue skies or falling rain, perpetually in quest of what the world eternally offered, eternally concealed––that indefinite, glimmering thing called “heart’s desire.”
To discover, to comprehend, to help, to guide their myriad aspirations in the interminable and headlong hunt for happiness, was, to Palla, the most vital problem in the world.
For her there existed only one solution of this problem: the Law of Love.