arm and slender hand were revealed, as with a graceful sweep the
lady lifted her rustling drapery and disappeared within the doors
of the one foreign cafe lingering reluctant on Union Square.

With a sigh, Randall Clayton turned back toward the south, for a
hasty glance at a clock face told him that there was left him but
fifteen minutes wherein to reach the Bank, before the brazen bells
would clang high noon. His heart was beating strangely as he retraced
his steps, for the ichor of young blood was boiling in his veins
at last.

He was lost in a clouding day dream, as he recrossed Fourth Avenue
and only dimly saw the foxy face of his office boy flash out of
the jostling crowd on the corner before he darted over.

As he resolutely stemmed the tide pouring eastward, he had turned
down Broadway before he realized that there had been a half smile
of recognition on those rich red Hungarian lips, a wordless message
in the dark splendors of the gleaming eyes.

Could it be? They had lingered but a few moments together gazing
on the pictured glories of the distant Danube. Clayton felt that
some new influence had suddenly loosened all the pent-up longings
of his ardent nature. He was above all the vulgar pretenses of
the "boulevardier." He now realized in a single moment the hollow
loneliness of a life made up only of so many monthly pay days and
so many dull returns of the four unheeded seasons. For his life had
only been a heavy pathway of toil up an inclined plane of manifold
resistances.