He stood there idly on the curbstone, smiling at his past illusions and at the similarity of his present plight. He was as poor as ever, with the same wants to meet, the same burden to bear, and none of his illusions left. Nothing had changed in his life except his easy faith in the generosity of his fellows. There was his grandmother, indeed, whose generosity was no illusion—at a word she would shoulder all his difficulties. But that word he could not speak. And in all the rest of the world he knew of no one ready to take on the burden of an unsuccessful novelist… .

He wandered up Fifth Avenue, letting the noise and the tumult drug him to insensibility. The cold brief daylight had vanished in a blaze of nocturnal illumination. Vance crossed over to Broadway and tramped on aimlessly till a call flamed out at him from among all the other flaming calls. Beethoven—The Fifth Symphony … He had heard it for the first and only time with Halo Tarrant, the previous winter… . Well, he was going to hear it again, to hear it by himself that very evening. He turned in at the concert hall, secured the last seat in the highest gallery, and wandered away again to pick up a sandwich and a cup of coffee before the concert began. The night was cold, and the hot coffee set all his veins singing. Music and heat and love … they were what a fellow needed who was young and hungry and a poet… .

From his corner of the upper heaven he could lean over and catch sight of the orchestra stalls where he and Halo had sat on that divine night. He remembered, vaguely, her having said something about their being subscription seats—about her husband's always having them for the Beethoven cycle—and his heart began to beat at the thought that she might actually be sitting there, far below him, that he might presently discover her small dark head and white shoulders standing out from the indifferent throng. But he had come early; nearly all the orchestra seats were still empty, and it was impossible to identify the two they had occupied. With a painful fixity he sat watching as the great auditorium gradually filled up. He had forgotten all about the music in his agonized longing to see Mrs. Tarrant again. He did not mean to try to speak to her—what was the use?—but to see her would be a bitter ecstasy; and he was in pursuit of all the ecstasies that night… .

And then, abruptly, the music began. Unperceived by him the orchestra had noiselessly filed in, filling the stage tier by tier; the conductor's gesture broken the hush, and in the deep region of the soul the echo of the fateful chords awoke.