"You like that?" said Beecher, when once more they were in the automobile and the din and oppression of cell-like monstrosities had receded.
"I do," Gunther replied, locking and unlocking his broad hands.
"Horrible!"
"That's only one side of it—speculation," said Gunther warmly; "but even that is impressive. Look beyond those little mobs we saw, get the feeling of the whole country, the vast nation, rising in anger—flinging over hundreds of thousands of holdings—sweeping down the little gamblers with the tremendous waves of its alarm. Beyond that the whole vibrating industry of the nation is here, within a quarter of a mile—the great projects of development, the wars of millions, the future of immense territories to the West and the South. There's a big side to it—a real side—that gets me. I've a mind to walk down now and face the old governor and tell him I'm ready."
"Why don't you?" said Beecher. He himself had felt the restlessness of indecision and enforced idleness. He gave a laugh. "You know, Bruce, I'm beginning to feel the same way. Either I've got to get into the current somewhere, or I'm going to pack off for Africa some fine day."
"By the way, Tilton's up at the club. He's here for a few days, getting ready for a lion hunt or something."
"Tilton?" exclaimed Beecher joyfully. "By Jove, I must get hold of him. I'd go in a minute!"
He believed what he said. The whirl of emotions into which he had lately been plunged—revealing to him as it had all the mercenary, clutching side of the city—had left him disturbed, rebellious, longing to be away from the mass of men in general, and of women in particular, the brilliant, keen, and calculating women of the city with whom he had been thrown. Impatient and disillusionized, without realizing the true cause, he repeated:
"By Jove, I'd go in a minute!"
In the afternoon he went to call on Miss Charters. After having declared twenty times that he would not go near her, he suddenly remembered, at the end of a wearied discussion between his conscience and his inclination, that his check for twenty thousand dollars was to be reclaimed and, at once seizing such a satisfactory reason, he abandoned the attitude of embattled dignity which he had logically built up.