He had experienced a sense of reluctant relinquishment to find how the weeks had fled during his illness. Winter had advanced; the Cumberland River was full of floating ice; the town had the shrunken, deserted, torpid aspect common to every southern city when the snow is on the ground. No one was abroad without absolute necessity except the English sparrow, prosperous exile. In the hope of varying the tedium, one evening, Gwinnan sat down in one of the arm-chairs drawn close to the balustrade of the corridor overlooking the rotunda. It was a coigne of vantage from which all the life of the hotel was visible. Below, at the desk, the in-coming travelers were registering their names; the click of billiards was a cheerful incident of the atmosphere, with the rising of the fumes of many a cigar. On the opposite corridor the clatter of dishes could be heard from the dining-room, and occasionally there emerged gentlemen and toothpicks. The rumble of the elevator sounded ceaselessly, and now and then fluttering flounces issued from its door which was visible down a cross-hall. Behind Gwinnan the great windows opened upon the snowy street. He could see the white roofs opposite gleam dimly against the nebulous sky. Carriage-lamps sometimes flashed past, yellow, lucent with jeweled effects. An electric light hard by flamed with a fibrous radiance, and empurpled the black night, and conjured circles, mystically white, far-reaching into the snow. The plate-glass gave a reflection of his long lank figure and the red velvet arm-chair, and of the innumerable children of the place, racing about, unrestrained, in white frocks, much bedizened. There was a dog among them, a poodle, in his white frock too, accoutered also with a sharp, shrill cry, and swiftly gamboling despite much fat. He had as independent an aspect as if he knew that all the legislators crowded into all the caucuses in the city could not compass a dog-law that would interfere with his pretty liberty, or place a tax on his frizzy head. The sovereign people would have none of it. And so the obnoxious law stands repealed, and the dog-star is in the ascendant. Now and then he came and sat at Gwinnan’s feet, with a lolling tongue and panting sides. There had been a caucus in the reading-room of the hotel, and presently the doors opening upon the corridor began to disgorge knots of men, some of whom walked off together, others stood in discussion. Now and then one was seized by a lobbyist, lying in wait. Gwinnan was aware of Harshaw’s presence before he saw him: a liquid, gurgling, resonant laugh, and then the floater, accompanied by a colleague into whose arm he had hooked his own, came through the door. His hat was thrust on the back of his yellow head; he stroked his yellow beard with a gesture of self-satisfaction; his face was broad and animated, and pink with prosperity.