An endless procession was this, in which human entities were molecules, that crept, elbowing, jamming, laughing along.  Holly-wreathed windows bore, in additional decoration, placards announcing, “This cafe is open all night.”  For this was the city’s wild occasion of suspended laws, when two edicts only hold in the favored points of rendezvous, “Nothing but wine,” and, “Everything goes.”

Vendors of paper caps, false mustaches, confetti, balloons and all the noise-swelling devices ever bred of deviltry, hawked their wares along the curbs, and the furs of women glittered with atoms of colored paper.

Within the restaurants and cabarets was added to the outer din a popping of corks, a fanfare of orchestras and the songs of supper guests at tables and dancers on the floors.

Already a sequence of wild scenes telescoped themselves along the White Way, but the evening was yet young and would ripen toward fulfilment as the hours progressed.  Its Bacchanalian zenith would be reached after the million lights of these gilded places had died—­like the snuffing of a single candle—­into the five minutes of darkness which heralds the changing year.

Along the uproarious sidewalks, pressing ragged shoulders to the richness of ermine and seal, drifted many hopeless derelicts, but tonight was to be a night of forgetting them, of forgetting everything save that it was a “large evening” and that life held only the present clarion of gaiety.  The tragedy under this thin crust must be ignored.  Mirth must be crowned; laughter must be enthroned; glasses must sparkle and clink and such individuals as elected to remain sober must look indulgently and smilingly on scenes which, at another time, would require a blush.  To blush on Broadway on New Year’s Eve would be a misdemeanor.  It doesn’t happen.

One splinter of human drift which was carried along on the tide gazed about out of a chalky face—­morphia-stamped.  This chip on the churning eddy bore the name of Paul Burton.  He had of course no business there.  For him there was no reasonable prospect of a happy new year.  There still remained a roof—­of a sort—­to cover him when he went home, which was not so often as it should be, and he still wore a suit of decent cut, though of a past fashion, but in its pockets there was no jingle of coins.  Passively Paul had been drawn into the maelstrom of the marching crowds, yet he was not of its membership.  He could not turn in at any of the doors that blazed with light and invitation.  But he had certain dreams which vaguely recompensed him—­and in his pockets was a hypodermic needle.

At Longacre square, where the swirl and eddy of human currents met and became a cauldron and whirlpool, he was held up at a crossing, while the crowd shrunk back on itself, waiting the raised hand of the traffic policeman.

Finding himself jostled, he glanced languidly over his shoulder.  The needle makes for such languidness at times between its moments of dreaming and its moments of jumping nerves.