Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/198

The Loom of Destiny stable which, with its stamping horses and tall hansoms and men who were always washing down big carriages, had once seemed a sort of paradise to him, waned and finally flickered out in his affections. He forgot, too, the undertaker's window with the little satin-draped coffin in it, before which he used to stand by the hour with wondering eyes. And when he had once climbed up the wide stone steps and peeked timidly into the Cathedral, dark, vast, silent and mysterious, he no longer sat opposite the little Sullivan Street Church and wondered why people walked up through its door, always in their best clothes, and with cold, set faces.

So Teddie Sullivan became a sort of Buccaneer on the city's high seas of beauty, and went cruising up and down the Avenue in search of all those sounds and sights in which he took such an incongruous delight. There seemed to be a taint of aristocracy in his slum blood. At many an afternoon reception he was an uninvited guest, and quite often sat on the railing outside and dined, in fancy, at the different restaurants where he saw the 186