to walk away it seemed to him as if he mounted upon
the air. The trust she had shown him, the praise she had given him, that
crush of the hand: he hoped nothing, he formed no idea from it, but it
all filled him with love that cast out the pain and shame he had been
suffering. He believed that he could never be unhappy any more; the
hardness that was in his mind toward his father went out of it; he saw
how sorely he had tried him; he grieved that he had done it, but the
means, the difference of his feeling about the cause of their quarrel,
he was solemnly glad of that since she shared it. He was only sorry for
his father. "Poor father!" he said under his breath as he went along.
He explained to her about his father in his reverie, and she pitied his
father, too.

He was walking over toward the West Side, aimlessly at first, and then
at times with the longing to do something to save those mistaken men
from themselves forming itself into a purpose. Was not that what she
meant when she bewailed her woman's helplessness? She must have wished
him to try if he, being a man, could not do something; or if she did
not, still he would try, and if she heard of it she would recall what
she had said and would be glad he had understood her so. Thinking of her
pleasure in what he was going to do, he forgot almost what it was; but
when he came to a street-car track he remembered it, and looked up and
down to see if there were any turbulent gathering of men whom he might
mingle with and help to keep from violence. He saw none anywhere; and
then suddenly, as if at the same moment, for in his exalted mood all
events had a dream-like simultaneity, he stood at the corner of an
avenue, and in the middle of it, a little way off, was a street-car, and
around the car a tumult of shouting, cursing, struggling men. The driver
was lashing his horses forward, and a policeman was at their heads, with
the conductor, pulling them; stones, clubs, brickbats hailed upon the
car, the horses, the men trying to move them. The mob closed upon them
in a body, and then a patrol-wagon whirled up from the other side, and
a squad of policemen leaped out and began to club the rioters. Conrad
could see how they struck them under the rims of their hats; the blows
on their skulls sounded as if they had fallen on stone; the rioters ran
in all directions.

One of the officers rushed up toward the corner where Conrad stood, and
then he saw at his side a tall, old man, w