"Good-by!" said she, huskily. "You are real, ain't you?"
"Damnably so," admitted Peter. "Good-by, then, Gracie." And he left her standing by the table, the empty wine-glass before her. The streets stretched before him emptily.—That poor, done-for kid! What is one to do for these Gracies?
"Mister! For God's sake! I'm hungry!" a hoarse voice accosted him. A dirty hand was held out.
Mechanically Peter's hand went to his pocket, found a silver dollar, and held it out. The dirty hand snatched it, and without so much as a thank you the man rushed into a near-by bakery. Peter shuddered.
When he reached his room, he sat for a long time before his open window, and stared at the myriads and myriads of lights. From the streets far below came a subdued, ceaseless drone, as if the huge city stirred uneasily in her sleep—perhaps because she dreamed of the girls she prostituted and the men she starved. And it was like that everywhere. If the great cities gave, they also took, wastefully. Peter was tormented, confronted by the inexorable question:
"What am I going to do about it?"
He couldn't answer, any more than any other earnest and decent boy could answer, whose whole and sole weapon happened to be a paint-brush. One thing he resolved: he wouldn't add to the sum total; nobody should be the worse off because he had lived. So thinking, the bridegroom fell asleep.
When he awoke in the morning, he lay for a moment staring at the strange ceiling overhead; his mind had an uneasy consciousness that something impended. Then he sat up suddenly in his bed, and clutched his head in his hands.
"Lord have mercy on me!" cried Peter. "I've got to get up and get married!"
By ten o'clock his luggage was on its way to the steamer. Dressed in his new clothes, ring and license carefully tucked away in his pocket, Peter took an hour off and jumped on a bus. It delighted him to roll around the streets on top of a bus. He felt that he could never see enough of this wonderful, terrible, beautiful, ugly, cruel, and kind city. Everywhere he turned, something was being torn down or up, something was being demolished or replaced. New York was like an inefficient and yet hard-working housekeeper, forever house-cleaning; her house was never in order, and probably never would be, hence this endless turmoil. Yet, somehow, Peter liked it. She wasn't satisfied with things as they were.