Mr. Deane stopped again. He reached for his climax. He found it. “I presume,” he said, “I presume no sane man will deny that William McKinley is the greatest statesman to-day in the world.” He said this with a new impressive quiet. He had heard a speech of Senator Black: he had shaken hands with him. He recalled his gesture. David nodded. He felt he must do something. He felt a strange discomfort. Why should he resent these patriotic words? why want to doubt them? Should he not have found glory in believing? His mind dropped back to Thomas Rennard and he knew that Rennard would have contrived to scout these boasts. He found himself relieved. He wanted Rennard as a companion in the guilt of his mood. He was quite sure it was guilt to doubt a word of his uncle’s. No question of that. He sat beside him in the car: his uncle was reading his third morning paper. They spurted and clanked, they swayed down the great iron street. David was swung in the wonders of this clanging cable that tossed them headlong, while the wheels groaned to be free of their rails, that dropped them rocking and sighing to a halt. What he saw was himself surrounded by mournful men--clottings of men under straps--and all devoured by the news they sucked from their papers, all immersed by the same strange shadows--angular shadows--he felt in his own veins. Beyond the maze of men ran out the mazes of traffic. Capering strides of horses with yearnful nostrils; interminable houses, motley, jagged, restless, broken off into squares and corners like herded wild things before the assault of other wild things more volatile than they. So it seemed to David: these buildings grouped in panic were of one stuff and soul with the scurrying, arrogant throngs that pressed about them and clambered through them.