"If you will. It is only a few blocks, but I want to hear about the gown
you will wear for your triumph."

It seemed to him that there was the chime of silver bells in her
laughter. "Oh, my dear, must every victory of my life end in a forlorn
hope!"




CHAPTER IV

THE TRIBAL INSTINCT


The spirit of the age, the worship of the many-headed god of magnitude,
was holding carnival in the town. Faster and faster buildings were
rising; the higher and more flimsily built, the better it seemed, for it
is easier to demolish walls that have been lightly erected. Everywhere
people were pushing one another into the slums or the country.
Everywhere the past was going out with the times and the future was
coming on in a torrent. Two opposing principles, the conservative and
the progressive, had struggled for victory, and the progressive
principle had won. To add more and more numbers; to build higher and
higher; to push harder and harder; and particularly to improve what had
been already added or built or pushed--these impulses had united at last
into a frenzied activity. And while the building and the pushing and the
improving went on, the village grew into the town, the town grew into
the city, and the city grew out into the country. Beneath it all,