rivalry; sane and healthy and vigorous; brutal in its ambition,
arrogant in the new-found knowledge of its giant strength, prodigal
of its wealth, infinite in its desires. In its capacity boundless,
in its courage indomitable; subduing the wilderness in a single
generation, defying calamity, and through the flame and the debris
of a commonwealth in ashes, rising suddenly renewed, formidable, and
Titanic.

Laura, her eyes dizzied, her ears stunned, watched tirelessly.

"There is something terrible about it," she murmured, half to
herself, "something insensate. In a way, it doesn't seem human. It's
like a great tidal wave. It's all very well for the individual just
so long as he can keep afloat, but once fallen, how horribly quick
it would crush him, annihilate him, how horribly quick, and with
such horrible indifference! I suppose it's civilisation in the
making, the thing that isn't meant to be seen, as though it were too
elemental, too--primordial; like the first verses of Genesis."

The impression remained long with her, and not even the gaiety of
their little supper could altogether disperse it. She was a little
frightened--frightened of the vast, cruel machinery of the city's
life, and of the men who could dare it, who conquered it. For a
moment they seemed, in a sense, more terrible than the city
itself--men for whom all this crash of conflict and commerce had no
terrors. Those who could subdue it to their purposes, must they not
be themselves more terrible, more pitiless, more brutal? She shrank
a little. What could women ever know of the life of men, after all?
Even Landry, extravagant as he was, so young, so exuberant, so
seemingly innocent--she knew that he was spoken of as a good