Gladiator by Philip Wylie — Read

Hugo sat in Madison Square Park giving his attention in a circuit to the Flatiron Building, the clock on the Metropolitan Tower, and the creeping barrage of traffic that sent people scampering, stopped, moved forward again. He had sat on the identical bench at the identical time of day during his obscure undergraduate period. To repeat that contemplative stasis after so much living had intervened ought to have produced an emotion. He had gone to the park with that idea. But the febrile fires of feeling were banked under the weight of many things and he could suffer nothing, enjoy nothing and think but one fragmentary routine.

He had tried much and made no progress. He would be forced presently to depart on a different course from a new threshold. That idea went round and round in his head like a single fly in a big room. It lost poignancy and eventually it lost meaning. Still he sat in feeble sunshine trying to move beyond stagnancy. He remembered the small man with the huge roll of bills who had moved beside him and asked for a cup of coffee. He remembered the woman who had robbed him; silk ankles crossed his line of vision, and a gusty appetite vaporized even as it steamed into the coldness of his indecision.