Steve
Hunter's imagination was aroused. For some reason the black clouds of dust
and the running people gave him a tremendous sense of power. It almost
seemed to him that he had filled the sky with clouds and that something
latent in him had startled the people. He was anxious to get away from
the men who had just agreed to join him in his first great industrial
adventure. He felt that they were after all mere puppets, creatures he
could use, men who were being swept along by him as the people running
along the streets were being swept along by the storm. He and the storm
were in a way akin to each other. He had an impulse to be alone with the
storm, to walk dignified and upright in the face of it as he felt that in
the future he would walk dignified and upright in the face of men.
Steve went out of the bank and into the street. The men inside shouted
at him, telling him he would get wet, but he paid no attention to their
warning. When he had gone and when his father had run quickly across the
street to his jewelry store, the three men who were left in the bank
looked at each other and laughed. Like the loiterers before Birdie Spinks'
drug-store, they wanted to belittle him and had an inclination to begin
calling him names; but for some reason they could not do it. Something had
happened to them. They looked at each other with a question in their eyes.
Each man waited for the others to speak.
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