The Park had always been his friend; it had given him society when no
door was open to him; it had been the inspiration of all his
ambitions; it was the Park that had first showed him ladies and
gentlemen in all the gaud and charm of town leisure. There he had
seen for the first time the panorama of slanting sunshades, patent
leather shoes, horses cantering in the dusty sunlight, or proudly
grouped, the riders flicking the flies away with gold-headed whips.
He loved the androgynous attire of the horsewomen--collars, silk
hats, and cravats. The Park appealed to him intensely and strangely
as nothing else did. He loved the Park for the great pasture it
afforded to his vanity. It was in the Park he saw the fashionable
procuress driving--she who would not allow him to pay even for
champagne in her house; it was in the Park he met the little actress
who looked so beseechingly in his face; it was in the Park he met
fashionable ladies who asked him to dinner and took him to the
theatre; it was in the Park he had found life and fortune, and,
saturated with happiness, with health, tingling with consciousness of
his happiness, Mike passed among the various crowd, which in its
listlessness seemed to balance and air itself like a many-petalled
flower. But much as the crowd amused and pleased him, he was more
amused and pleased with the present vision of his own personality,
which in a long train of images and stories passed within him. He
loved to dream of himself; in dreams he entered his soul like a
temple, seeing himself in various environment, and acting in manifold
circumstances.

"Here am I--a poor boy from the bogs of Ireland--poor people" (the
reflection was an unpleasant one, and he escaped from it); "at all
events a poor boy without money or friends. I have made myself what I
am.... I get the best of everything--women, eating, clothes; I live