Out on the street once more, Ben Blair looked about him as one awakening from a dream. From the darkened arch of a convenient doorway he watched the endless passing throng with a dull sort of wonder. He was surprised that the city should be awake at that late hour; and stepping out into the light he held up his watch. The hands indicated a few minutes past ten, and in surprise he carried the timepiece to his ear. Yes, it was running, and must be correct. He had seemed to be up there on the eleventh floor for hours; but as a matter of fact it had been only minutes. Practically, the whole night was yet before him.
Slowly, in a listless way, he started to walk back to his hotel. Instead of the night becoming cooler it had grown sultrier, and in places the walk was fairly packed with human beings. More than once he had to turn out of his way to pass the chattering groups. In so doing he was often conscious that the flow of small talk suddenly ceased, and that, nudging each other, the chatterers pointed his way. At first he looked about to see what had attracted them, but he very soon realized that he himself was the object of attention. Even here, cosmopolitan as were the surroundings, he was a marked man, was recognized as a person from a wholly different life; and his feeling of isolation deepened. He moved on more swiftly.
The sidewalk in front of his hotel was fringed with a row of chairs, in which sat guests in various stages of negligee costume. Nearly every man was smoking, and the effect in the semi-darkness was like that of footlights turned low. Steps and lobby were likewise crowded; but Ben made his way straight to his room. One idea now possessed him. His business was finished, and he wanted to be away. Turning on a light, he found a railroad guide and ran down the columns of figures. There was no late night train going West; he must wait until morning. Extinguishing the light, he drew a chair to the open window and lit a cigar.
With physical inactivity, consciousness of his surroundings forced themselves on his attention. Subdued, pulsating, penetrating, the murmur of the great hotel came to his ears; the drone of indistinguishable voices, the pattering footsteps of bell-boys and habitués, the purr of the elevator as it moved from floor to floor, the click of the gate as it stopped at his own level, the renewed monotone as it passed by.
Continuous, untiring, the sounds suggested the unthinking vitality of a steam-engine or of a dynamo in a powerhouse. A mechanic by nature, as a school-boy Ben had often induced Scotty to take him to the electric light station, where he had watched the great machines with a fascination bordering on awe, until fairly dragged away by the prosaic Englishman. This feeling of his childhood recurred to him now with irresistible force. The throb of the motor of human life was pulsating in his ears; but added to it was something more, something elusive, intangible, but all-powerful. The moment he had arrived within the city limits he had felt the first trace of its presence. As he approached the centre of congestion it had deepened, had become more and more a guiding influence. Since then, by day or by night, wherever he went, augmenting or diminishing, it was constantly with him. And it was not with him alone. Every human being with whom he came in contact was likewise consciously or unconsciously under the spell. The crowds he had passed on the streets were unthinkingly answering its guidance. The trolley cars echoed its voice. It was the spirit of unrest--a thing ubiquitous and all-penetrating as the air that filled their lungs--a subtle stimulant that they took in with every breath.