She tried to force
herself to call up pictures of Broadway, swarming with crowds of black
things, which, seen from the windows of its monstrous buildings,
seemed like swarms of ants, burst out of ant-hills, out of a thousand
ant-hills. She tried to remember shop windows, the things in them, the
throngs going by, and the throngs passing in and out of great, swinging
glass doors. She dragged up before her a vision of Rosalie, driving
with her mother and herself, looking about her at the new buildings and
changed streets, flushed and made radiant by the accelerated pace and
excitement of her beloved New York. But, oh, the slow, penetrating
rainfall, and--the cold damp clay!
She rose, making an involuntary sound which was half a moan. The long
mirror set between two windows showed her momentarily an awful young
figure, throwing up its arms. Was that Betty Vanderpoel--that?
"What does one do," she said, "when the world comes to an end? What does
one do?"
All her days she had done things--there had always been something to do.
Now there was nothing. She went suddenly to her bell and rang for her
maid. The woman answered the summons at once.
"Send word to the stable that I want Childe Harold.
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