Jump to content

Page:The One Woman (1903).pdf/188

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

in leadership in the Social Revolution it must bring.

His face flushed with the new enthusiasm, and the glorious autumn day about him seemed one with his spirit. The sky was cloudless with fresh breezes sweeping over the seas from the south.

When he stepped to the downtown platform his eye wandered up and down Twenty-third Street and Sixth Avenue and lingered on rivers of women, below.

His own drama, his million-dollar gift, the enormous sensation it had made in the morning press, had not produced a ripple on this swirling tide of flesh. They crowded the windows filled with feathers and hats, elbowed and jostled one another on the pavements, pushed and squeezed and trampled each other's feet and skirts fighting for standing room around the Monday bargain counters, oblivious of the existence of the spiritual world, church, God, or devil.

Again the ceaseless roar of the city, calm and fierce as the sea, one with its eternity of life, stunned him with its immensity and its indifference. He felt himself once more but an atom lost in the surging tides that beat on these stone pavements, worn by the surge of myriads dead and waiting for the throb of hosts unborn. What did they care? If he were to drop dead that moment, in the morning of his manhood, with the shout of victory on his lips, they would not lift an eye from their gaze on hat or ribbon