When he awoke, it was three o'clock in the afternoon. He
bounded up with a start; half of one of his precious days gone
already! He spent more than an hour in dressing, watching every
stage of his toilet carefully in the mirror. Everything was
quite perfect; he was exactly the kind of boy he had always
wanted to be.

When he went downstairs Paul took a carriage and drove up
Fifth Avenue toward the Park. The snow had somewhat abated;
carriages and tradesmen's wagons were hurrying soundlessly to and
fro in the winter twilight; boys in woolen mufflers were
shoveling off the doorsteps; the avenue stages made fine spots of
color against the white street. Here and there on the corners
were stands, with whole flower gardens blooming under glass
cases, against the sides of which the snowflakes stuck and
melted; violets, roses, carnations, lilies of the valley--somehow
vastly more lovely and alluring that they blossomed thus
unnaturally in the snow. The Park itself was a wonderful stage
winterpiece.

When he returned, the pause of the twilight had ceased and
the tune of the streets had changed. The snow was falling
faster, lights streamed from the hotels that reared their dozen
stories fearlessly up into the storm, defying the raging Atlantic
winds. A long, black stream of carriages poured down the avenue,
intersected here and there by other streams, tending
horizontally. There were a score of cabs about the entrance of
his hotel, and his driver had to wait. Boys in livery were
running in and out of the awning stretched across the sidewalk,