The milky glass roof of the central court of the Wingfield store acted as a screen to the omnipotent visitor, but he set unfiltered patches of delight in the aisles and on the counters near the walls.  Mamie Devore and Burleigh and Peter Mortimer and many other clerks and employees asked if this were like a desert day and Jack said that it was.  He longed to be free of all roofs and feel the geniality of the hearth-fire of the planetary system penetrating through his coat, his skin, his flesh, into his very being.  Why not close the store and make a holiday for everybody? he asked himself; only to be amazed, on second thought, at such a preposterous suggestion from a hundred-dollar-a-week author of created profits in the business.  He was almost on the point of acting on another impulse, which was that he and his father break away into the country in a touring car, not knowing where they were going to stop until hunger overtook an inn.  This, too, he dismissed as a milder form of the same demoralizing order of heresy, bound to be disturbing to the new filial relations springing from the night when he had told his desert story over the coffee, which, contrary to the conventional idea of an exchange of confidences clearing the mind of a burden, had only provoked more restlessness.

At least, he would fare forth for a while on the broad asphalt trail that begins under the arch of the little park and runs to the entrance of the great park.  Even as the desert has its spell of overawing stillness in an uninhabited land, so this trail had its spell of congested human movement in the heart of habitations.  A broad, luminous blade lay across the west side of the street and left the other in shade; and all the world that loved sunshine and had no errands on the east side kept to the west side.  There was a communism of inspiration abroad.  It was a conqueror’s triumph just to be alive and feel the pulse-beat of the throng.  The very over-developed sensitiveness of city nerves became something to be thankful for in providing the capacity for keener enjoyment as compensation for the capacity for keener pain.

Womankind was in spring plumage.  The mere consciousness of the value of light to their costumes, no less than the elixir in their nostrils, gave vivacity to their features.  As usual, Jack was seeing them only to see Mary.  The creation of no couturier could bear rivalry with the garb in which his imagination clothed her.  He found himself suddenly engrossed in a particular exhibit of fashion’s parade a little distance ahead and going in the same direction as himself, a young woman in a simplicity of gown to which her carriage gave the final touch of art.  Her steps had a long-limbed freedom and lightness, with which his own steps ran in a rhythm to the music of some past association.  The thrall of a likeness, which more and more possessed him, made him hasten to draw near for a more satisfying glimpse.