By the time she reached Broadway her anger had ebbed, but the oppression, the feeling that she was being slowly smothered, was still in her throat and bosom.  After all, seen in the sober light of reason, why had she been so indignant?  There had been a misapprehension; he had thought that she was in love with him, and thinking so, he had kissed her.  That was the case plainly stated; and what was there in this to send a burning, rush of anger to her heart?  What was there in this that had made her turn and insult him?  For the first time in her life she had lost her temper without cause, and had raged, she told herself sternly, like a fury.  And beneath her rage she had been conscious always of some vague, incomprehensible disloyalty to Arthur—­of a feeling of, humiliation, of self-reproach, which appeared ridiculous when she remembered that she had been kissed against her will and without warning.  But, in spite of this, she knew intuitively, with a knowledge deeper than reason, that the glory of her Dream had paled in the moment when she lay in O’Hara’s arms.

A subtle change had come over the spirit of spring since she had left the elm tree and the emerald veil of the grass.  It was no longer jubilant, but languorous, wistful, haunting, as if it eternally pursued, through the fugitive seasons, an immortal and ineffable beauty.  The enchanted crystal had been shattered in an instant, and she saw life now, not imprisoned in magical sunshine, but gray, sordid, monotonous, as utterly hopeless as the faces thronging in Broadway.  Yet not many months ago she had seen in these, same faces the inward hope, the joy in sadness, the gaiety in disappointment, which had brightened the world for her.  Then she had been aware of an invisible current flowing from the crowd to herself; but to-day this shining current was broken or turned aside, and she felt detached, adrift, and distrustful of the future.  That mental correspondence with the mood of the crowd, with the life of the city, which had come to her first on the brilliant morning in September, and then again when she walked home with O’Hara in the winter’s dusk—­which had released a new faculty in her soul, and had given her a fresh perception of human responsibilities—­this had deserted her so utterly that she could barely remember its miraculous visitation.  Then her personal life had seemed to become a part of the life of the street, of the sky, of the mysterious city outlined against the gray background of dusk.  To-day she walked alone and without sympathy through the crowd.  Her feet dragged, and she felt dully that she had lost her share in both the street and the sky.  The very faces of the men and women around her—­those lethargic foreign faces which crowded out the finer American type—­awoke in her the sensation of hopeless revolt which one feels before the impending destruction of higher forms by masses of inert and conscienceless matter.  She thought gloomily:  “I have lost the vision—­there is no hope either for me or for America except in the clear vision of the future.”  And while she spoke there passed over her the vague feeling of loss, of something missing, as if a precious possession had slipped from her grasp.