II

Fifth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street swarmed with the noon crowd. The
wealthy, happy sun glittered in transient gold through the thick
windows of the smart shops, lighting upon mesh bags and purses and
strings of pearls in gray velvet cases; upon gaudy feather fans of
many colors; upon the laces and silks of expensive dresses; upon the
bad paintings and the fine period furniture in the elaborate show
rooms of interior decorators.

Working-girls, in pairs and groups and swarms, loitered by these
windows, choosing their future boudoirs from some resplendent display
which included even a man's silk pajamas laid domestically across the
bed. They stood in front of the jewelry stores and picked out their
engagement rings, and their wedding rings and their platinum wrist
watches, and then drifted on to inspect the feather fans and opera
cloaks; meanwhile digesting the sandwiches and sundaes they had eaten
for lunch.

All through the crowd were men in uniform, sailors from the great
fleet anchored in the Hudson, soldiers with divisional insignia from
Massachusetts to California, wanting fearfully to be noticed, and
finding the great city thoroughly fed up with soldiers unless they
were nicely massed into pretty formations and uncomfortable under the
weight of a pack and rifle. Through this medley Dean and Gordon
wandered; the former interested, made alert by the display of humanity
at its frothiest and gaudiest; the latter reminded of how often he had
been one of the crowd, tired, casually fed, overworked, and
dissipated. To Dean the struggle was significant, young, cheerful; to
Gordon it was dismal, meaningless, endless.