be backward about usin' it. It won't be the first lolly-gaggin' in there. Yuh needn't be a bit afeard o' that."
After a self-conscious silence that carried them to the street corner, they both suddenly laughed—an apologetic laugh that pretended to accept Mrs. McGahn's insinuations as absurd.
V
Life in New York had seemed to Don a sort of multitudinous obscurity in which individuals were merely atoms of a homogeneous mass, living, thinking, and acting in groups of thousands; and it had seemed to him that death, there, would be worse than death at sea. He had found himself walking the streets in the midst of activities in which he had no part, like a ghost; and he had been as unregarded as if he had been indeed invisible. But now, on this memorable Monday, he was to begin acquiring a new point of view; he was to find that what had been a desert to one person could be an Eden for two; he was to learn that the indifference of the city could be as happy as the indifference of the fields.
He went with a swinging stride, from Mrs. McGahn's doorway up the cold November streets, through an iron rumble of cars and waggons, as much alone with his thoughts as if he were walking on the seashore beside the continual and meaningless rush and thunder of waves.
