With an aggressive movement that made his companion even more alert than usual, the brown-eyed young man shook himself erect, as though to cast behind him these evil thoughts. It was a beautiful day, and flowers blazed in the broad windows of the florists--roses and carnations and lilacs. There were lilacs also in the arbitrary hats the women were wearing, and the same tint was often echoed in their costumes. He had always been attentive to the changes of fashion--always subject to the charm of woman. As he was borne down the Avenue by the side of the man in whose custody he was, it struck him that this year the girls were prettier than usual--younger, more graceful, more fascinating, more desirable. He followed with his eyes first one and then another, noting the sweep of the skirt, the curve of the bodice, the grace of gesture, the straggling tendril of hair that had escaped upon the neck. For a brief moment the pleasure of his eye took his thoughts away from his future; and then swiftly his mind leaped forward to the next spring, when no woman's face would chance within the range of his vision, and when the unseen blossoming of nature would bring only impotent desire. What zest could there be in life when life was bounded in a whitewashed cell? At Thirty-fourth Street the hansom was halted to let a funeral cross the current of the Avenue. An open carriage came first, its seats covered with flowers, tortured into stiff set pieces; the white hearse followed, with a satin-covered coffin visible through its plate-glass sides; and then half a dozen carriages trailed after. The prisoner in the hansom noticed that the shades were drawn in the one that followed the hearse; it bore a grief too sacred for observation--a mother's, no doubt. He was suddenly glad that his parents had both died when he was yet a boy. To be alone in the world, with no family to keep him warm with tolerant affection--this had often saddened him; now at last he rejoiced at it. When a man is on his way to prison to serve a term of years, the fewer those who cherish him, the luckier for them. That he loved a woman--that, indeed, he was going to jail because of his love for her--this might add poignancy to his pain; but he felt himself manly for once in trying to believe it was better now that she did not love him, that she did not even know of his love for her.