woman. Bernal's presence kept him from noting how really pronounced and
unwavering her aversion had become.

Nor did Bernal note her attitude. Whatever he may have read in Allan at
those times when the look of cold appraisement was turned full upon him,
he had come to know of his brother's wife only that she was Nancy of the
old days, strangely surviving to greet him and be silent with him, or to
wonder with him when he came in out of that preposterous machine of many
wheels that they called the town. No one but Nancy saw anything about it
to wonder at.

To Bernal, after his years in the big empty places, it was a part of all
the world and of all times compacted in a small space. One might see in
it ancient Jerusalem, Syria, Persia, Rome and modern Babylon--with
something still peculiar and unclassifiable that one would at length
have to call New York. And to make it more absorbing, the figures were
always moving. Where so many were pressed together each was weighted by
a thousand others--the rich not less than the poor; each was stirred to
quick life and each was being visibly worn down by the ceaseless
friction.

When he had walked the streets for a week, he saw the city as a huge
machine, a machine to which one might not even deliver a message without
becoming a part of it--a wheel of it. It was a machine always
readjusting, always perfecting, always repairing itself--casting out
worn or weak parts and taking in others--ever replacing old wheels with
new ones, and never disdaining any new wheel that found its place--that
could give its cogs to the general efficiency, consenting to be worn
down by the unceasing friction.