gust and whipping of the shower. Why had no one told him of the
glory of the city? She was pride, she was exultation, she was
madness. She was what he had obscurely craved. In every line of
her gallant profile he saw conquest, triumph, victory! Empty
conquest, futile triumph, doomed victory--but that was the
essence of the drama. In thunderclaps of dumb ecstasy he saw her
whole gigantic fabric, leaning and clamouring upward with
terrible yearning. Burnt with pitiless sunlight, drenched with
purple explosions of summer storm, he saw her cleansed and pure.
Where were her recreant poets that they had never made these
things plain?

And then, after the senseless day, after its happy but
meaningless triviality, the throng and mixed perfumery and silly
courteous gestures, his blessed solitude! Oh solitude, that noble
peace of the mind! He loved the throng and multitude of the day:
he loved people: but sometimes he suspected that he loved them as
God does--at a judicious distance. From his rather haphazard
religious training, strange words came back to him. "For God so
loved the world . . ." So loved the world that--that what? That
He sent someone else . . . Some day he must think this out. But
you can't think things out. They think themselves, suddenly,
amazingly. The city itself is God, he cried. Was not God's
ultimate promise something about a city--The City of God? Well,
but that was only symbolic language. The city--of course that was
only a symbol for the race--for all his kind. The entire species,
the whole aspiration and passion and struggle, that was God.

On the ferries, at night, after supper, was his favourite place
for meditation. Some undeniable instinct drew him ever and again