It is a difficult thing to describe: I never felt just that way before.
I stopped at last on the main street of Kilburn in the very heart of the town.

I stopped because it seemed necessary to me, like a man in a flood, to touch bottom, to get hold upon something immovable and stable.
It was just at that hour of evening when the stores and shops are pouring forth their rivulets of humanity to join the vast flood of the streets.

I stepped quickly aside into a niche near the corner of an immense building of brick and steel and glass, and there I stood with my back to the wall, and I watched the restless, whirling, torrential tide of the streets.

I felt again, as I had not felt it before in years, the mysterious urge of the city--the sense of unending, overpowering movement.
There was another strange, indeed uncanny, sensation that began to creep over me as I stood there.

Though hundreds upon hundreds of men and women were passing me every minute, not one of them seemed to see me.