It was a world wholly different from Fifth Avenue.There was none ofthat sense of space and luxury he had known on the wide slopes of Murray Hill.He wandered under terrific buildings, in a breezy shadow where javelins of colourless sunlight pierced through thin slits, hot brilliance fell in fans and cascades over the uneven terrace of roofs.Here was where husbands worked to keep Fifth Avenue going: he wondered vaguely whether Mrs.Sealyham had bought those stockings? One day he saw his uncle hurrying along Wall Street with an intent face.Gissing skipped into a doorway, fearing to be recognized.He knew that the old fellow would insist on taking him to lunch at the Pedigree Club, would talk endlessly, and ask family questions.But he was on the scent of matters that talk could not pursue.
He perceived a sense of pressure, of prodigious poetry and beauty and amazement.This was a strange jungle of life.Tall coasts of windows stood up into the pure brilliant sky: against their feet beat a dark surf of slums.In one foreign street, too deeply trenched for sunlight, oranges were the only gold.The water, reaching round in two arms, came close: there was a note of husky summons in the whistles of passing craft.Almost everywhere, sharp above many smells of oils and spices, the whiff of coffee tingled his busy nose.Above one huge precipice stood a gilded statue--a boy with wings, burning in the noon.Brilliance flamed between the vanes of his pinions: the intangible thrust of that pouring light seemed about to hover him off into blue air.
