Here in New York, as the lights of its own metropolitan scale came winking on randomly at left, at center, at right and up and down and middle in scrambled array, with the pale, limited incandescence of tungsten and of phosphors, filling in the pieces of the great architectural jigsaw, I did not this time turn away. I am not able to forget the Belson rings, nor do I ever want to. I am not one to forget either that this human world of ours has beauty that can stun the mind—the rain forests, the canyons, coasts, the gray skin of deep ocean, the grim antarctic mists. New York was built by pressure and noise, yet its beauty—far beyond the human noise that made it—penetrates to the marrow. I felt Isabel’s warm body beside me and heard her breath catch in her throat as we watched Manhattan create itself before us. I would have given my whole lovely fortune for Aunt Myra to be there with us and to have heard her own breath catch as she saw New York reawaken. I hugged Isabel to my side. It was good to be home.
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