black silhouettes against a tremulous sea of light.

Along this blinding whirl blaze the playhouses, their
wide portals aflame with crackling globes, toward which
swarm bevies of pleasure-seeking moths, their eyes
dazzled by the glare. Some with heads and throats
bare dart from costly broughams, the mountings of
their sleek, rain-varnished horses glittering in the flash
of the electric lamps. Others spring from out street
cabs. Many come by twos and threes, their skirts
held high. Still others form a line, its head lost in a
small side door. These are in drab and brown, with
worsted shawls tightly drawn across thin shoulders.
Here, too, wedged in between shabby men, the collars
of their coats muffling their chins, their backs to the
grim policeman, stand keen-eyed newsboys and ragged
street urchins, the price of a gallery seat in their tightly
closed fists.

Soon the swash and flow of light flooding the street
and sidewalks shines the clearer. Fewer dots and
lumps of man, cab, and cart now cross its surface.
The crowd has begun to thin out. The doors of the
theatres are deserted; some flaunt signs of "Standing
Room Only." The cars still follow their routes,
lunging and pausing like huge beetles; but much of
the wheel traffic has melted, with only here and there
a cab or truck between which gold-splashed umbrellas
pick a hazardous way.