Quietly, Dot shut the door behind him. It would be a long time, she knew, before it would open again.
CHAPTER XXII
The night was quiet, and the air was warm and still.
The man and the woman walked close together, and with slow, unmeasured steps, as though the great, slumbering city was a garden, and they were exploring it for the first time.
They did not speak, for their eyes were wide, engrossed simply in seeing.
A soldier passed them, then a man who might have been a store-clerk, a student, a salesman, a clergyman, a scientist.
A young couple approached from the opposite direction, saying quiet things to each other, perhaps deciding intimate, very important plans for some near future time.
They passed an all-night drug store, its gaudy light washing the sidewalk to the curb, limning the wide racks of newspapers and magazines which told their stories in a dozen languages, on a thousand themes.
The streets were wide and empty, but they were not lonely, for in them were the silent echoes of the struggles and victories, big and small, that had been fought, won and lost in them in a day just dying, just to be born again in a few short hours.