Restlessness seized the hearts of men and the works of men.  From the almshouses and the jails emerged the vagrants, stopped overnight to meet their cronies in dives and saloons, and next day took the freight to the blooming West, or tramped by foot the dust of the roads that leave the city and go ribboning over the shoulder and horizon of the world.  Windows were flung open, and the fresh sweet air came in to make the babies laugh and the women wistful and the men lazy.  Factories droned with machines that seemed to grate against their iron fate.  And of a night, now, the parks, the byways, and the waterside were the haunts of young lovers—­stealing out together, arms round each other’s waists—­the future of the world in their trembling hands.

The air was full of the rumor of great things.  Now, perchance, human nature at last was going to reveal itself, the love and hope and comradeliness and joy tucked away so deep in its interlinings.  Now, possibly, the streets were going to be full of singing, and the housetops were going to rejoice with the mellower stars.  Anything was possible.  Did not earth set an example, showing how out of a hard dead crust and a forlorn and dry breast she could pour her new oceans of million-glorious life?  If the dead tree could blossom and put forth green leaves, what dead soul need despair?

Swinging and swaying and gliding, the great white Sound liner came up on the morning and swept her flag-flapped way down the shining river.  Her glad whistle released her buoyant joy to the city, and the little tugs and the ferries answered with their barks and their toots.  Up she came, triple-decked, her screw swirling in the green salt water, her smoke curling lustrous in the low-hung sun.  She passed Blackwells Island, she swung easily beneath the great span of the Fifty-ninth Street bridge, and gave “good-morning” to the lower city.

On a side-deck, leaning over the rail, stood a man and a woman.  The man was strong, tan-faced, his eyes bright with fresh power.  The woman was rosy-cheeked and exquisite in her new beauty.  For the miracle of Spring which changed the earth had changed Myra and Joe.  They too had put forth power and life, blossom and new green leaves.  They had gone to the earth to be remade; they had given themselves over to the great physician, Nature; they had surrendered to the soil and the sun and the air.  Earth had absorbed them, infolded them, and breathed anew in their spirits her warmth, her joy, her powerful peace.  They had run bare-headed in the sun; they had climbed, panting, the jutting mountainside; they had taken the winds of the world on the topmost peak; they had romped in the woods and played in the meadow.  And then, too, they had fed well, and rested much, and been content with the generous world.

And in that health and peace of nature at last to Joe had come the great awakening of his life.  The mental stock-taking he had begun on the day when Lissner had spoken to him, reached there its climax; the confusion cleared; the chaos took wonderful new shape.