By the time he had got into his overcoat and followed her into the
street, the snow had begun to fall more rapidly in large powdery
flakes, which soon covered him in a thick, frosty coating from head to
foot. As he walked briskly toward his office, he noticed with a
quickened attention the women who like Connie, with nervous faces
showing above elaborate gowns, were borne swiftly past him in hired
cabs. Something, he hardly knew what, had opened his eyes to that
glittering life of the world of which he had always been profoundly
ignorant, and it seemed to him suddenly that the distance between
himself and his wife had broadened to an impassable space in a single
night. Connie was no longer the girl whom he remembered under
cherry-coloured ribbons. She came in reality no closer to him than did
the tired, restless women, with artificially brightened faces, who
appeared to his exhausted eyes to whirl past him perpetually in cabs. A
passionate regret seized him for the thing which Connie was not and
could never be again--for the love he had never known and for the
fatherhood that had been denied him.

He had turned, still plunged in his thoughts, into a quiet cross street
where a crowd of ragged urchins were snowballing one another in a noisy
battle; and as he paused for an instant to watch the fight he noticed
that a man, coming from the opposite direction, had stopped also and
stood now motionless with interest upon the sidewalk. The peculiar
concentration of attention was the first thing which Adams remarked in
the stranger--from his absorbed level gaze it was evident that mentally
at least he had thrown himself for the moment into the thickest of the
battle, and there was a flush of eager enjoyment in the face which was
partially obscured by the falling snow flakes. Then, quick as a flash of
light, something pleasantly familiar in the watching figure, gripped
Adams with the memory of a college battle more than fifteen years ago,