From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building.

The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstantial dreams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not remember.

We must leave this terrifying place to-morrow and go searching for sunshine.

smoking had come to be an important punctuation mark in the long sentence of a day on the road.

The truth was that for some months he had been going through that partitioning of the things of youth wherein it is decided whether or not to die for what one no longer believes.

Stahr's eyes and Kathleen's met and tangled. For an instant they made love as no one ever dares to do after. Their glance was slower than an embrace, more urgent than a call.

They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.