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 —round moving spots, to each his romance under his hat.

The window was on the corner, overlooking the junction of three great highways of humanity: Twenty-third Street, with its booming crosstown cars, stretching away into the darkness on either hand; Broadway, forking off to the left, its distances merging into a hot glow of yellow radiance; Fifth Avenue, branching into the north with its desolate sidewalks oddly patterned in areas of dense shadow and a cold, clear light. Over the way the park loomed darkly, for all its scattered arcs, a black and silent space, a well of mystery. …

It was late, quite late; the clock in front of Dorlon's (he craned his neck to see), made the hour one in the morning; the sidewalks were comparatively deserted, even the pillared portico of the Fifth Avenue Hotel destitute of loungers. A timid hint of coolness, forerunning the dawn, rode up on the breeze.

He looked up and away northward, for many minutes, over housetops stenciled black against the glowing sky, his gaze yearning into vast distances of