Imagery in the ending of "Bunner Sisters"

In the final chapter of the book, I was struck by the imagery on page 365 as Ann Eliza leaves "Bunner Sisters for the last time.
"She walked to Broadway and down to the office of the house-agent to whom she had entrusted the sub-letting of the shop. She left the key with one of his clerks, who took it from her as if it had been anyone of a thousand others, and remarked that the weather looked as if spring was really coming; then she turned and began to move up the great thoroughfare, which was just beginning to wake to its multitudinous activities" (Wharton 365).
Both the image of spring evoked by what the clerk said and the "awakening" neighborhood evoke images of new life (365). This is juxtaposed to the recent discussion on page 359 between Ann Eliza and Evelina on her deathbed about her dead baby. This novel ends with the loss of two lives, but in this imagery, it brings the hope of two more, but in different ways. They are not human lives, but images of life that people like Ann Eliza need to keep living. This hope for life is what allows this story to end on a happy note, unlike the sour tone of Evelina's return to New York.