Above every other recognition, though, was a
consciousness of impending event. What happened now, in the car rapidly
approaching Central Park, was unimportant, without power to contain him
in its moment. They turned in at the Fifty-ninth Street entrance:
through the glass there was a shifting panorama of black branches,
deserted walks and benches and secretive water. He saw vaguely the
Belvedere, the Esplanade fountain, and the formal length of the Mall,
together with--flung against the sky--the multitudinous lighted windows
of Central Park West, the high rippling shimmer of the monumental
lifted electric signs on Broadway. Other cars passed, swift and
soundless, he saw their occupants and then they were gone: an aged man
whose grey countenance might have been moulded in sand with a frigid
trained nurse; a couple desperately embracing in a taxi-cab; a knot of
chattering women in dinner dresses and open furs; another alone,
painted, at once hard and conciliatory, hurrying to an appointment.
The tension, his suspense, increased until he thought it must burst out
the windows. Between the shudders and the kissing he kept wondering
when.... It was Savina, at the speaking-tube, who commanded their
return. They left the Park for Fifth Avenue, Sixty-sixth Street. Lee
got out, but she didn't follow. He waited expectantly. The night had
grown very much colder.
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