With unfeeling
regularity the sun rose out of the East River. On Broadway
electric-light signs flashed, street-cars pursued each other, taxicabs
bumped and skidded, women, and even men, dared to look happy, and had
apparently taken some thought to their attire. They did not respect even
his widowerhood. They smiled upon him, and asked him jocularly about
the farm and his "crops," and what he was doing in New York. He pitied
them, for obviously they were ignorant of the fact that in New York
there were art galleries, shops, restaurants of great interest, owing to
the fact that Polly Kirkland had visited them. They did not know that on
upper Fifth Avenue were houses of which she had deigned to approve, or
which she had destroyed with ridicule, and that to walk that avenue and
halt before each of these houses was an inestimable privilege.
Each day, with pathetic vigilance, Ainsley examined his heart for the
promised sign. But so far from telling him that the change he longed for
had taken place, his heart grew heavier, and as weeks went by and no
sign appeared, what little confidence he had once enjoyed passed with
them.
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