interview
drove quickly off at her signal, and Conrad stood a moment looking after
the carriage. His heart was full of joy; it leaped; he thought it would
burst. As he turned 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 th