He joined
the circle of amused spectators, to watch those pink-ribboned bits of
femininity swaying airily to and fro in unison with the tune. One
especially attracted his notice--a slim olive-coloured girl from a land
where it is always spring. Her whole being translated into music, with
hair dishevelled and feet hardly touching the ground, the girl suggested
an orange-leaf dancing on a sunbeam. The rasping street-organ,
perchance, brought to her melodious reminiscences of some flute-playing
Savoyard boy, brown-limbed and dark of hair. For several minutes Reginald Clarke followed with keen delight each
delicate curve her graceful limbs described. Then--was it that she grew
tired, or that the stranger's persistent scrutiny embarrassed her?--the
music oozed out of her movements. They grew slower, angular, almost
clumsy. The look of interest in Clarke's eyes died, but his whole form
quivered, as if the rhythm of the music and the dance had mysteriously
entered into his blood. He continued his stroll, seemingly without aim; in reality he followed,
with nervous intensity, the multiform undulations of the populace,
swarming through Broadway in either direction. Like the giant whose
strength was rekindled every time he touched his mother, the earth,
Reginald Clarke seemed to draw fresh vitality from every contact with
life. He turned east along Fourteenth street, where cheap vaudevilles are
strung together as glass-pearls on the throat of a wanton. Gaudy
bill-boards, drenched in clamorous red, proclaimed the tawdry
attractions within. Much to the surprise of the doorkeeper at a
particularly evil-looking music hall, Reginald Clarke lingered in the
lobby, and finally even bought a ticket that entitled him to enter this
sordid wilderness of décolleté art. Street-snipes, a few workingmen,
dilapidated sportsmen, and women whose ruined youth thick layers of
powder and paint, even in this artificial light, could not restore,
constituted the bulk of the audience. Reginald Clarke, apparently
unconscious of the curiosity, surprise and envy that his appearance
excited, seated himself at a table near the stage, ordering from the
solicitous waiter only a cocktail and a programme. The drink he left
untouched, while his eyes greedily ran down the lines of the
announcement. When he had found what he sought, he lit a cigar, paying
no attention to the boards, but studying the audience with cursory
interest until the appearance of Betsy, the Hyacinth Girl. When she began to sing, his mind still wandered. The words of her song
were crude, but not without a certain lilt that delighted the uncultured
ear, while the girl's voice was thin to the point of being unpleasant. When, however, she came to the burden of the song, Clarke's manner
changed suddenly. Laying down his cigar, he listened with rapt
attention, eagerly gazing at her. For, as she sang the last line and
tore the hyacinth-blossoms from her hair, there crept into her voice a
strangely poignant, pathetic little thrill, that redeemed the execrable
faultiness of her singing, and brought the rude audience under her
spell. Clarke, too, was captivated by that tremour, the infinite sadness of
which suggested the plaint of souls moaning low at night, when lust
preys on creatures marked for its spoil. The singer paused. Still those luminous eyes were upon her. She grew
nervous. It was only with tremendous difficulty that she reached the
refrain. As she sang the opening lines of the last stanza, an
inscrutable smile curled on Clarke's lips. She noticed the man's
relentless gaze and faltered. When the burden came, her singing was hard
and cracked: the tremour had gone from her voice. III


Long before the appointed time Ernest walked up and down in front of the
abode of Reginald Clarke, a stately apartment-house overlooking
Riverside Drive. Misshapen automobiles were chasing by, carrying to the cool river's
marge the restlessness and the fever of American life. But the bustle
and the noise seemed to the boy only auspicious omens of the future. Jack, his room-mate and dearest friend, had left him a month ago, and,
for a space, he had felt very lonely. His young and delicate soul found
it difficult to grapple with the vague fears that his nervous brain
engendered, when whispered sounds seemed to float from hidden corners,
and the stairs creaked under mysterious feet. He needed the voice of loving kindness to call him back from the valley
of haunting shadows, where his poet's soul was wont to linger overlong;
in his hours of weakness the light caress of a comrade renewed his
strength and rekindled in his hand the flaming sword of song. And at nightfall he would bring the day's harvest to Clarke, as a
worshipper scattering precious stones, incense and tapestries at the
feet of a god. Surely he would be very happy. And as the heart, at times, leads the
feet to the goal of its desire, while multicoloured dreams, like
dancing-girls, lull the will to sleep, he suddenly found himself
stepping from the elevator-car to Reginald Clarke's apartment. Already was he raising his hand to strike the electric bell when a sound
from within made him pause half-way. "No, there's no help!" he heard Clarke say. His voice had a hard,
metallic clangour. A boyish voice answered plaintively. What the words were Ernest could
not distinctly hear, but the suppressed sob in them almost brought the
tears to his eyes. He instinctively knew that this was the finale of
some tragedy. He withdrew hastily, so as not to be a witness of an interview that was
not meant for his ears. Reginald Clarke probably had good reason for parting with his young
friend, whom Ernest surmised to be Abel Felton, a talented boy, whom the
master had taken under his wings. In the apartment a momentary silence had ensued. This was interrupted by Clarke: "It will come again, in a month, in a
year, in two years." "No, no! It is all gone!" sobbed the boy. "Nonsense. You are merely nervous. But that is just why we must part. There is no room in one house for two nervous people." "I was not such a nervous wreck before I met you." "Am I to blame for it--for your morbid fancies, your extravagance, the
slow tread of a nervous disease, perhaps?" "Who can tell? But I am all confused. I don't know what I am saying. Everything is so puzzling--life, friendship, you. I fancied you cared
for my career, and now you end our friendship without a thought!" "We must all follow the law of our being." "The laws are within us and in our control." "They are within us and beyond us. It is the physiological structure of
our brains, our nerve-cells, that makes and mars our lives. "Our mental companionship was so beautiful. It was meant to last." "That is the dream of youth. Nothing lasts. Everything flows--panta rei. We are all but sojourners in an inn. Friendship, as love, is an
illusion. Life has nothing to take from a man who has no illusions." "It has nothing to give him." They said good-bye. At the door Ernest met Abel.