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When he had his suitcase and an irregular bundle of his belongings ready at the foot of the bed, he removed from the wall a painting there, whose dark colors, shot with gold, had held Harriet’s attention in the meantime. She put out her hand so that he would not have to carry three things at once. She did not look at the picture, but the image resonated in her eye, investing the darkness with its colors. She tucked it under her arm, leaving her hands free to hold her skirt tight to her body. A likeness to what? she wondered. Something not of this world.
    When they had reached the door, when the sharp air of the street allowed her at last to take a proper breath, she asked: “Wasn’t that your bed?”
    He smiled without humor, startling her with the whiteness of his teeth: “It is my bed, and it is his bed also. In two hours my friend will go to his work, which is making steam. Tomorrow he will have to share it with him you met on the stairs. It is not so bad as you think. There are other lodgings where you pay for eight hours only. I have slept there too.”
    She could think of no word or gesture, everything she had said or done having served only to further his humiliation, and so he finished the conversation for her. “You were wanting to know if this was my home. Now you see that it is not.”
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    T HE SIMPLE FACT OF turning north onto Fifth Avenue ignited in Amos Bigelow a slow fuse of conversation that flared up occasionally into loquacious monologue. Perhaps his good humor had to do with being pointed generally in the direction of home and the ironworks; perhaps it had to do with the anticipation of his dinner. An ordinarylamp-lit street corner might prick his memory; he had a clear recollection of each landmark, even of some now vanished. The strangeness of the scene itself—silence, whiteness, and the thinning of all traffic—heightened his powers of observation and association, for the ordinary boundaries of this world were dissolving in the snow, each building or monument was released from obligation to its visible surroundings and submitted now to the influence of time or history as perceived by Amos Bigelow.
    At the corner of Twenty-third Street and Fifth Avenue, with the gaudy illumination of Madison Square Garden to the east lending a lurid tint to the snowfall, Amos Bigelow tapped Toma’s shoulder and said: “Stop just here if you will.”
    He gave the side window a swipe with his coat sleeve and pointed at the vast construction site on the northwest corner. Harriet leaned closer to Toma so that she could see better, put her hand carelessly, confidently, on his to balance herself. “What is that, Papa?”
    â€œIt is not much to look at now, and I’ve no idea what they’ve a mind to do, but there was a fine hotel, Mr. Astor’s, standing there only a couple of years ago, and I remember it well because it was my father’s favorite, and more than once I stayed there with him. Think of that, your grandfather and your father, when he wasn’t even as old as you are now. And do you know, it’s not even that I miss the hotel so much, though it seems a shame to be tearing down a perfectly good one. No, what I miss is what was here before that, Franconi’s Hippodrome, which they tore down to make the hotel. I don’t think there was ever a place like it, not that I heard anyway. Part circus you’d say, and a pleasure dome besides. Covered in canvas, it was, but painted too, and in the ring—a whole city block, it seemed, or most of it—the horses and riders would perform, sometimes just the one and sometimes dozens, or hundreds, performing in formations, almost like dancing, or a parade. And the costumes. Well, I never saw anything to beat it, and I’ve lived long enough to see a lot of strange and wonderful things. I don’t know, maybe it’s for the best that it’s gone. And the music—why, they had