How astonishingly easy it had all been; here he was, the thing done; and this time there would be no awakening, no figure at the top of the stairs.  He watched the snow flakes whirling by his window until he fell asleep.

When he awoke, it was four o’clock in the afternoon.  He bounded up with a start; one of his precious days gone already!  He spent nearly an hour in dressing, watching every stage of his toilet carefully in the mirror.  Everything was quite perfect; he was exactly the kind of boy he had always wanted to be.

When he went downstairs, Paul took a carriage and drove up Fifth avenue toward the Park.  The snow had somewhat abated; carriages and tradesmen’s wagons were hurrying soundlessly to and fro in the winter twilight; boys in woollen mufflers were shovelling off the doorsteps; the avenue stages made fine spots of colour against the white street.  Here and there on the corners whole flower gardens blooming behind glass windows, against which the snow flakes stuck and melted; violets, roses, carnations, lilies of the valley—­somehow vastly more lovely and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow.  The Park itself was a wonderful stage winter-piece.

When he returned, the pause of the twilight had ceased, and the tune of the streets had changed.  The snow was falling faster, lights streamed from the hotels that reared their many stories fearlessly up into the storm, defying the raging Atlantic winds.  A long, black stream of carriages poured down the avenue, intersected here and there by other streams, tending horizontally.  There were a score of cabs about the entrance of his hotel, and his driver had to wait.  Boys in livery were running in and out of the awning stretched across the sidewalk, up and down the red velvet carpet laid from the door to the street.  Above, about, within it all, was the rumble and roar, the hurry and toss of thousands of human beings as hot for pleasure as himself, and on every side of him towered the glaring affirmation of the omnipotence of wealth.

The boy set his teeth and drew his shoulders together in a spasm of realization; the plot of all dramas, the text of all romances, the nervestuff of all sensations was whirling about him like the snow flakes.  He burnt like a faggot in a tempest.

When Paul came down to dinner, the music of the orchestra floated up the elevator shaft to greet him.  As he stepped into the thronged corridor, he sank back into one of the chairs against the wall to get his breath.  The lights, the chatter, the perfumes, the bewildering medley of colour—­he had, for a moment, the feeling of not being able to stand it.  But only for a moment; these were his own people, he told himself.  He went slowly about the corridors, through the writing-rooms, smoking-rooms, reception-rooms, as though he were exploring the chambers of an enchanted palace, built and peopled for him alone.