CHAPTER VI
CLAY TAKES A TRANSFER
From the top of a bus Clay Lindsay looked down a canon which angled
across the great city like a river of light.
He had come from one land of gorges to another. In the walls of this
one, thousands and tens of thousands of cliff-dwellers hid themselves
during the day like animals of some queer breed and poured out into the
canon at sunset.
Now the river in its bed was alive with a throbbing tide.
Cross-currents of humanity flowed into it from side streets and ebbed
out of it into others. Streams of people were swept down, caught here
and there in swirling eddies. Taxis, private motors, and trolley-cars
struggled in the raceway.
Electric sky-signs flashed and changed. From the foyer of theaters and
moving-picture palaces thousands of bulbs flung their glow to the
gorge. A mist of light hung like an atmosphere above the Great White
Way.
All this Clay saw in a flash while his bus crossed Broadway on its way
to the Avenue. His eyes had become accustomed to this brilliance in
the weeks that had passed since his descent upon New York, but
familiarity had not yet dulled the wonder of it.
The Avenue offered a more subdued picture. This facet showed a glimpse
of the city lovelier and more leisurely, though not one so feverishly
gay. It carried his mind to Beatrice Whitford. Some touch of the
quality of Fifth Avenue was in her soul. It expressed itself in the
simple elegance of her dress and in the fineness of the graceful, vital
body.
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