As he stood now, hesitating for a moment beside the crossing, he became dimly aware that he had passed quickly from one state of consciousness into another, from the brief period of dream into the briefer transition which precedes the awakening—­and that there was a distinct gap between his former and his present frame of mind.  He was awakening—­this he realised as he watched the crowd which surged rapidly by on either side—­and there came to him almost with the conviction a vivid presentiment that the full return of his senses would bring at the same time a clearer and a deeper conception of life.  His short unhappiness showed suddenly as a nightmare, and while he looked at the men and women among whom he stood, he felt that the egoism of his love for Laura had broadened into a generous stream of humanity which filled the world.  The personal had passed suddenly into the universal; the spirit of desire had showed itself to be one with the spirit of pity; and the very agony of the rebellion through which he had come appeared as he looked back upon it to have enriched his consciousness of the tragedy in other lives.  To live close to mankind, to make a little easier the old worn road, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the labourer at his toil, these were the impulses which sprang like a new growth from his past selfish longing.  “Let me feel both the joy and the sorrow among which I move,” was the prayer he now found strength to utter.

With renewed energy he turned to go onward, when, as he stepped upon the crossing by which he stood, he saw that a woman at his side was weeping softly, without noise, as she walked.  Something of his old restraint, his old embarrassment, checked him for a moment; then he saw that she was poor and middle-aged and plainly clad, and he turned to speak to her, though still with a slight hesitation.

“I wish you would do me the kindness to tell me your trouble,” he said.

She stopped short in her walk and looked up with a nervous squint of her eyes, while the undried tears were still visible on her large mottled cheeks.  As she stood there, timid and silent, before him, he saw that the basket contained a squirming mass of gray fur, and stooping to look at it more attentively, he found that the fur belonged to a number of small animals, huddled asleep on the fragment of a red and white plaid shawl.  He liked the woman’s face and he liked, too, the little creatures in the basket; and more than this he felt the great need of helping as the one means to bridge the extreme spiritual isolation in which he stood.  To give one’s self!  Was not this final surrender of the soul the beginning of all faith as of all love?

“I believe that you need help,” he said, in the winning voice which had always had a strange power to open out the hearts of others, “and I know that I need to give it.”

In the midst of the crude noises of the street, surrounded by the screaming newsboys and the clanging cars, he saw that she paused for an instant to cast a quick, frightened glance about her.