ever knew or heard of. And such toilettes!"

With every instant the number of people increased; progress became
impossible, except an inch at a time. The women were, almost without
exception, in light-coloured gowns, white, pale blue, Nile green,
and pink, while over these costumes were thrown opera cloaks and
capes of astonishing complexity and elaborateness. Nearly all were
bare-headed, and nearly all wore aigrettes; a score of these, a
hundred of them, nodded and vibrated with an incessant agitation
over the heads of the crowd and flashed like mica flakes as the
wearers moved. Everywhere the eye was arrested by the luxury of
stuffs, the brilliance and delicacy of fabrics, laces as white and
soft as froth, crisp, shining silks, suave satins, heavy gleaming
velvets, and brocades and plushes, nearly all of them
white--violently so--dazzling and splendid under the blaze of the
electrics. The gentlemen, in long, black overcoats, and satin
mufflers, and opera hats; their hands under the elbows of their
women-folk, urged or guided them forward, distressed, preoccupied,
adjuring their parties to keep together; in their white-gloved
fingers they held their tickets ready. For all the icy blasts that
burst occasionally through the storm doors, the vestibule was
uncomfortably warm, and into this steam-heated atmosphere a
multitude of heavy odours exhaled--the scent of crushed flowers, of
perfume, of sachet, and even--occasionally--the strong smell of damp
seal-skin.

Outside it was bitterly cold. All day a freezing wind had blown from
off the Lake, and since five in the afternoon a fine powder of snow
had been falling. The coachmen on the boxes of the carriages that
succeeded one another in an interminable line before the entrance of