Bibbs guessed that Sheridan was
bragging of the city and of Bigness to some visitor from
out-of-town.
And he thought how truly Sheridan was the high priest of Bigness.
But with the old, old thought again, "What for?" Bibbs caught a
glimmer of far, faint light. He saw that Sheridan had all his life
struggled and conquered, and must all his life go on struggling
and inevitably conquering, as part of a vast impulse not his own.
Sheridan served blindly--but was the impulse blind? Bibbs asked
himself if it was not he who had been in the greater hurry, after all.
The kiln must be fired before the vase is glazed, and the Acropolis
was not crowned with marble in a day.
Then the voice came to him again, but there was a strain in it as of
some high music struggling to be born of the turmoil. "Ugly I am,"
it seemed to say to him, "but never forget that I AM a god!" And the
voice grew in sonorousness and in dignity. "The highest should serve,
but so long as you worship me for my own sake I will not serve you.
It is man who makes me ugly, by his worship of me. If man would let
me serve him, I should be beautiful!"
Looking once more from the window, Bibbs sculptured for himself--in
the vague contortions of the smoke and fog above the roofs--a gigantic
figure with feet pedestaled upon the great buildings and shoulders
disappearing in the clouds, a colossus of steel and wholly blackened
with soot.
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