The Fifth Avenue busses were clumping and lumbering in swift succession to their stopping-places. How much, Susannah thought, they looked like prehistoric beetles; colossally big; armored to an incredible hardness and polish. And, already, roped-off crowds of people were patiently waiting upstairs seats. As each bus stopped, there came momentary scramble and confusion until inside and out they filled up. She watched this process for a long, long time.
“I can’t go to sleep yet,” she said to herself finally, “the people won’t let me. One can’t sleep in this wonderful world. Where does one go after dinner? Oh, to the theater, of course! On Broadway!” She found herself drifting, happily though languorously, through the arch and northward.
Twilight had settled down; had become dusk; had become night. New York was so brilliant that it almost hurt. It was deep dusk and yet the atmosphere was like a purple river flowing between stiff cañon-like buildings. Everywhere in that purple river glittered golden lights. And, floating through it, were mermaids and mermen of an extreme beauty. Susannah passed from Fifth Avenue to Broadway. She stopped under one of the most brilliant palace-fronts of light, and bought a ticket in the front row. The curtain was just rising on the second act of a musical comedy. Susannah would have been hazy about the plot anyway, for the simple reason that there was no plot. But tonight she was peculiarly hazy, because she enjoyed the dancing so much that she became oblivious to everything else. Indeed, at times she seemed to be dancing with the dancers. The illusion was so complete that she grew dizzy; and clung to the arm of her seat. She did not want to divide into two people again.
After a while, though, this sensation disappeared in a more intriguing one. For suddenly she discovered that the audience consisted entirely of her and the Carbonado Mining Company. H. Withington Warners, by the hundred, filled the orchestra seats. Byans, by the score, filled the balcony. O’Hearns, by the dozen, filled the gallery. But this did not perturb her. “You’re only a pack of cards,” she accused them mentally. And she stayed to the very end.
“I thought so,” she remarked contemptuously as she turned to go out. For the Carbonado Mining Company had vanished into thin air. She was the only real person who left the theater.
When she came out on the street again, her headache had stopped and the languor was over. There was a beautiful lightness to her whole body. That lightness impelled her to walk with the crowd. But—she suddenly discovered—she was not walking. She was floating. She even flew—only she did not rise very high. She kept an even level, about a foot above the pavement; but at that height she was like a feather. And in a wink—how this extraordinary division happened, she could not guess—she was two people once more.
New York was again blooming; but this time with its transient, vivacious after-the-theater vividness. Crowds were pouring up; pouring down, deflecting into side streets; emerging from side streets. Everywhere was light. Taxicabs and motors raced and spun and backed and turned; they churned, sizzled, spluttered, and foamed—scattering light. Tram-cars, the low-set, armored cruisers of Broadway, flashed smoothly past, overbrimming with light. The tops of the buildings held great congregations of dancing stars. Light poured down their sides.
Susannah floated with the strong main current of the crowd up Broadway and then, with a side current, a little down Broadway. Eddies took her into Forty-second Street, and whirled her back. And all the time she was in the crowd, but not of it—she was above it. She was looking down on people—she could see the tops of their heads. Susannah kept chuckling over an extraordinary truth she discovered.
“I must remember to tell Glorious Lutie,” she said to herself, “how few people ever brush their hats.”
While one self was noting this amusing fact, however, the other was listening to conversations; the snatches of talk that drifted up to her.