CHAPTER NINE
OWEN STORROW'S early training had been the direct antithesis of that bohemianism which clings about the skirts of the metropolitan art- colony. He found it more and more expedient, accord- ingly, to keep reminding himself that New York was not like the rest of the world as he had known it. It was a riddle which only time and study could decipher. Tangled up with its moments of exaltation were unex- pected aspects of degradation, just as anachronistic ugli- nesses still cropped up in the midst of its material beau- ties. It was a world by itself, apparently, disorderly, kaleidoscopic, contradictory. But behind its muddle of broken hues and its fortuity of frontal design, Storrow contended, it necessarily harboured some deep-hidden dignity of purpose, some unifying spirit of aspiration. It was the duty of the newcomer, therefore, to stand silent, to suspend judgment, to look deeper and await the final gift of understanding.
Yet the matter of Browning Tell and his costume-ball proved a good deal of a perplexity to the newcomer in question. Storrow had been told that it would be one of the best things of the year, equal to anything he would get in Paris, as good as the Quart' Arts Ball of Ninety- Two, about which the older men still spoke with wistful wags of the head. There would be famous people there, famous artists, famous beauties, authors, actresses, models, musicians, society idlers, and, in all probability, some fancy-dress apparel that would be frankly shocking. Torrie Throssel, he found, had been at such things, and
had no intention of going to this one. From the first,
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