Men in evening dress had thrown back overcoats, stepping jauntily up the steps of Clubs; working folk loitered; and women⁠—those women who at that time of night are solitary⁠—solitary and moving eastward in a stream⁠—swung slowly along, with expectation in their gait, dreaming of good wine and a good supper, or⁠—for an unwonted minute, of kisses given for love.

Those countless figures, going their ways under the lamps and the moving sky, had one and all received some restless blessing from the stir of spring. And one and all, like those clubmen with their opened coats, had shed something of caste, and creed, and custom, and by the cock of their hats, the pace of their walk, their laughter, or their silence, revealed their common kinship under the passionate heavens.

Bosinney and June entered the theatre in silence, and mounted to their seats in the upper boxes. The piece had just begun, and the half-darkened house, with its rows of creatures peering all one way, resembled a great garden of flowers turning their faces to the sun.