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.

Looking down Broadway early one evening—­a shining avenue of joy—­he thought of the times when he had gazed across a certain valley of his West and dreamed of bringing a message to this spot.

Against the sky many electric signs flamed garishly.  Beneath them were the little grinding wheels of the machine—­satisfied, joyous, wisely sufficient unto themselves, needing no message—­least of all the simple old truth he had to give.  He tried to picture his message blazing against the sky among the other legends:  from where he stood the three most salient were the names of a popular pugilist, a malt beverage and a theatre.  The need of another message was not apparent.

So he laughed at himself and went down into the crowd foregathered in ways of pleasure, and there he drank of the beer whose name was flaunted to the simple stars.  Truly a message to this people must be put into a sign of electric bulbs; into a phonograph to be listened to for a coin, with an automatic banjo accompaniment; or it must be put upon the stage to be acted or sung or danced!  Otherwise he would be a wheel rejected—­a wheel ground up in striving to become a part of the machine at a place where no wheel was needed.

For another experience cooling to his once warm hopes, the second day of his visit Allan had taken him to his weekly Ministers’ Meeting—­an affair less formidable than its title might imply.