Slowly, in a listless way, he started to walk back to his hotel. Instead
of the night becoming cooler it had grown sultrier, and in places the
walk was fairly packed with human beings. More than once he had to turn
out of his way to pass the chattering groups. In so doing he was often
conscious that the flow of small talk suddenly ceased, and that, nudging
each other, the chatterers pointed his way. At first he looked about to
see what had attracted them, but he very soon realized that he himself
was the object of attention. Even here, cosmopolitan as were the
surroundings, he was a marked man, was recognized as a person from a
wholly different life; and his feeling of isolation deepened. He moved
on more swiftly.

The sidewalk in front of his hotel was fringed with a row of chairs, in
which sat guests in various stages of negligee costume. Nearly every man
was smoking, and the effect in the semi-darkness was like that of
footlights turned low. Steps and lobby were likewise crowded; but Ben
made his way straight to his room. One idea now possessed him. His
business was finished, and he wanted to be away. Turning on a light, he
found a railroad guide and ran down the columns of figures. There was no
late night train going West; he must wait until morning. Extinguishing
the light, he drew a chair to the open window and lit a cigar.

With physical inactivity, consciousness of his surroundings forced
themselves on his attention. Subdued, pulsating, penetrating, the murmur
of the great hotel came to his ears; the drone of indistinguishable
voices, the pattering footsteps of bell-boys and _habitues_, the purr of
the elevator as it moved from floor to floor, the click of the gate as
it stopped at his own level, the renewed monotone as it passed by.

Continuous, untiring, the sounds suggested the unthinking vitality of a
steam-engine or of a dynamo in a powerhouse. A mechanic by nature, as a
school-boy Ben had often induced Scotty to take him to the electric
light station, where he had watched the great machines with a
fascination bordering on awe, until fairly dragged away by the prosaic
Englishman. This feeling of his childhood recurred to him now with
irresistible force. The throb of the motor of human life was pulsating
in his ears; but added to it was something more, something elusive,
intangible, but all-powerful. The moment he had arrived within the city
limits he had felt the first trace of its presence. As he appro