Nothing railed the crowd into a straight line on one side, though on the other a wall held them so. The impatient crowding forward from the rear convexed the outer edge of the line of people, much against the will of those persons who found themselves being swept out of the direct way and felt the main current surging past them. What was yet more agitating to these was that ahead of them an iron railing did begin, at the foot of some steps, fencing in a narrow approach to the ticket office. If they should be swept past the mouth of this lane on the outside, their chance of admittance was hopeless. Day stemmed the swerving current himself by the strength of his body and by a kind of determined exercise of his will. But he felt directly behind him someone less strong losing hold with every step of advance; then suddenly this despairing someone, realizing herself pushed quite to one side, with a little scream, caught at his crooked arm; which he instantly, involuntarily clapped firmly against him, hooking on in this manner and towing safely and rapidly along someone frailer than himself. When they had come to the rail he saw that he would get in by so narrow a margin himself that, himself inside, he would then but tow her along outside, which of course would be a less than useless thing for her. So he backed water, so to speak, with all his might, bracing himself against the end of the rail, until he had got a little space before him, around into which he drew her whom he thought robbed of her place by the frantic selfishness of the crowd. But in doing this, it seemed he had inadvertently held back for a moment the little peaked woman, who was at his inside elbow. She, finding herself delayed for a brief period almost at the goal in her desperate bargain-counter sort of rush for the ticket-window, blew out into a spitting cat kind of impotent fury. "Ain't you got no semblance of decency! you great big brute!" she screamed in his ear. "Ain't you got no ideas of gentlemanliness at all! If I was a man I'd teach you some shame, tramplin' on a woman, a poor weak woman! a woman!" She fairly writhed with scorn at this depravity. Day attempted to humble himself to her, for her pacification; but another woman's getting in ahead of her at that instant drove her almost mad, and her frenzy interfering for the moment with her articulation she could only glare at him with an expression suggesting some kind of feline hydrophobia. When her breath returned more to her command she continued to revile him as they went along. Although Day had done nothing to merit shame, he squirmed inwardly with something not unlike that feeling, and he blessed the general commotion which drowned a vixen's voice. He felt ashamed, too, to be where he was, though he had not thought of it that way before; he should not have brought himself into a crowd more than half of women.