It scarcely began before the last of August, when the guests ebbed
away by floods, in every train. The end of the season was purely
conventional. One day the almanac said it was August, and the hotel
was full; another day the almanac said it was September, and the vast
caravansary was instantly touched with depletion, and within a week it
hung loose upon its inmates like the raiment upon the frame of a man
who has been Banting. There was no change in the weather; that remained
as summerlike as ever, and grew more and more divinely beautiful. The
conditions continued the same, only more agreeable; the service was
still abundant and perfect; the table was of an unimpaired variety;
there was no such sudden revival of business or pleasure in the city
that people should abandon the leisure of the sea-shore; the ocean
smiled as serenely, the breakers crashed as lyrically along the beach;
the country, for those who were to prolong their outing, would be dry
and dusty. But a certain fiction of the calendar had reported itself
in the human consciousness; and as men are the prey of superstition
and emotion, the population of the huge hostelry yielded by a single
impulse to the pressure of the pretence that it was September.