6

comes gladly to its own once more, and for the remaining hours,
under the pretext of games and dancing, may drive free.

The sultry heat has waned. Visitors have left. Fresh
gossip is available and makes many a bridge for interchange.
Everywhere is the watchful gaiety of an expectant interval. Then,
fitfully, as children and old folk and the busier housewives
are substracted from the crowd, there comes a tension, a surging
up of momentous things, a measuring of chances, a half-conscious
summoning of the swift courage needed to encompass a presented
opportunity. To many who stay on now, to many of the young and
groping, to the bankrupt and stranded, will come a well-known
helplessness, still there, in spite of all the hopefulness.
And in this central human conflict there is no suport. It is
impossible to prepare, nothing can avail now, nothing but native
wealth seen under the inspiration of the moment. That group of
laughing girls reaps but a temporary "face" from its banded
fronting of the arena in which each must in the end play her
part alone.