After lunch Hedger strolled about the Square for the dog's health and
watched the stages pull out;--that was almost the very last summer of the
old horse stages on Fifth Avenue. The fountain had but lately begun
operations for the season and was throwing up a mist of rainbow water
which now and then blew south and sprayed a bunch of Italian babies that
were being supported on the outer rim by older, very little older,
brothers and sisters. Plump robins were hopping about on the soil; the
grass was newly cut and blindingly green. Looking up the Avenue through
the Arch, one could see the young poplars with their bright, sticky
leaves, and the Brevoort glistening in its spring coat of paint, and
shining horses and carriages,--occasionally an automobile, misshapen and
sullen, like an ugly threat in a stream of things that were bright and
beautiful and alive.

While Caesar and his master were standing by the fountain, a girl
approached them, crossing the Square. Hedger noticed her because she wore
a lavender cloth suit and carried in her arms a big bunch of fresh
lilacs. He saw that she was young and handsome,--beautiful, in fact, with
a splendid figure and good action. She, too, paused by the fountain and
looked back through the Arch up the Avenue. She smiled rather
patronizingly as she looked, and at the same time seemed delighted. Her
slowly curving upper lip and half-closed eyes seemed to say: "You're gay,
you're exciting, you are quite the right sort of thing; but you're none
too fine for me!"

In the moment she tarried, Caesar stealthily approached her and sniffed
at the hem of her lavender skirt, then, when she went south like an
arrow, he ran back to his master and lifted a face full of emotion and
alarm, his lower lip twitching under his sharp white teeth and his hazel
eyes pointed with a very definite discovery. He stood thus, motionless,