Once in a blue moon one becomes aware of people. Usually the crowds and their endless faces are a background. They circle around one the way ripples circle around a stone that has fallen into the water. The torments, elation of others; the ambitions, defeats of others; the bedlam of others--who the piano. A cornet, probably. Or a ukulele. _Parbleu_, what creates in the plunge from youth to age. Here, then, under the umbrellas outside the great financier's club, are people. One must marvel. They pass one another without so much as a glance. To each of them all the others--the bedlam of others--are ripples emanating from themselves. The great quests and struggles going on and the million agonies and tumults beating in the veins of the world--ripples. Yes, vague and vaguer ripples which surround the fact that one is going to buy a pair of suspenders; which circle the fact that one is invited out for dinner this evening. * * * * * Ah, the smug and oblivious ones under umbrellas! It rains, but the umbrellas keep off the rain. The world pours its distinctions and elations over their souls, but other umbrellas, invisible, keep off distractions and elations. And each of them, scurrying along outside the window of the great financier's club, is an omniscient world center to himself. The great play was written around him, a blur of disasters and ecstasies, a sort of vast and inarticulate Greek chorus mumbling an obbligato to the leitmotif which is at the moment the purchase of a pair of suspenders or a dinner invitation for the evening. None so small under these umbrellas outside the window but fancies himself the center of the cosmos. None so stupid but regards himself as the oracle of the times. And they scurry along without a glance at one another, each innately convinced that his ideas, his prejudices, his ambitions, his tastes are the Great Standard, the Normal Criterion. Puritan, paranoiac, sybarite, katatoniac, hardhead, dreamer, coward, desperado, beaten ones, striving ones, successful ones--all flaunt their umbrellas in the rain, all unfurl their invisible umbrellas to the world. Let it rain, let it rain--calamities and ecstasies tipped with fire and roaring with thunder--nothing can disturb the terrible preoccupation of the plunge from youth to age. * * * * * The pavements gleam like dark mirrors. The office window lights chatter in the gloom. An umbrella pauses. The great financier is giving directions to his chauffeur. The directions given, the great financier stands in the rain for a moment. His eyes look up and down the street. What does he see? Ripples, vague and vaguer ripples, that mark his passage from the limousine into the club.