The freshness and fragrance, the color and excitement, the beauty and gayety were not for him.

Youth was dead.

He could never enter the lists with these young men, many no younger than he, for the favor and smile of a girl.

Resignation had not been so difficult in the spiritual moment of realization and resolve, but to be presented with one concrete and stunning actuality after another, each with its mocking might-have-been, had grown to be a terrible ordeal.
Lane looked for faces he knew.

On each side of the pillar where he and Blair stood the stream of color and gayety flowed.