fortressed against squalor, poverty, crime, and discontent.
They were almost free to do as they pleased, as indeed their expedition
proved, and yet, such is the natural charity of the human heart, they
could not look from the windows of the cab and remain untroubled, or
fail to understand a little of those motives which turn the minds of the
unfortunate to thoughts of anarchy. There was no whole tragedy unrolled
before their eyes, not even a completed episode in one. It so happened
that they saw no one in tears or in liquor; on the contrary, they saw
many who laughed, many children playing games with and tricks upon one
another. Yet in its mirth the region was mirthless; its energy was not
physical, but nervous. It had an air of living intensely in the present,
for fear of remembering, for fear of looking ahead. And it needed but a
misunderstanding or a catchword to turn in a moment from recreation to
violence. Indeed, the mere fact of their own passing in the highly
polished cab with its wake of burned gas and Havana tobacco turned many
a smile into a scowl or a jeer.

Often the driver throttled his car to a snail's pace or brought it to a
full stop to avoid running over one of those children who, so far as
self-preservation goes, appear to be deaf, dumb, blind, and without
powers of locomotion; and during one of these halts a little girl,
walking slowly backward, her eyes upon another little girl who for no
apparent cause was making a series of malevolent faces at her, collided
with one of the tires and fell on her back directly in front of the
stationary car. Instantly she began to screech, and the street, hitherto
but scatteringly occupied, filled with raging people.

The driver from his seat, Bruce from one window, Savage from the other,
attempted to explain to deaf ears. Their voices were drowned in a
torrent of abuse.

Barbara, at first only exasperated by the stupidity of the crowd,
sitting very still and erect, had upon her face that expression of
bored contempt with which aristocrats in the French Revolution are said
to have gone to the guillotine. Then that was shouted in her ear which,
though but half, understood, turned her scarlet with anger.
Unfortunately Savage, hitherto patiently self-controlled, had heard the
compounded epithet hurled at Barbara, and in a moment his fighting blood
was beyond control, and he was out of the cab raining heavy blows upon a
bloated chalky-white face, and receiving worse t