The police-constable made a movement, but met a look in Nikolai's face which made him feel justified in restraining himself. This pertinacious, silent working man looked as though he could strike.
The door continued to open and shut as incessantly as before, and both the constable and the ticket collector had become in a measure reconciled to the man who stood there so persistently—it almost looked as if he had a lawful business there, with that bundle in his hand—when Nikolai suddenly put his smith's shoulder to the door and pressed violently against it.
The ticket collector resisted in vain with his body; his hands were occupied.
Through the opening Nikolai had seen Silla, red, laughing, and out of breath with dancing, coming down the room with Ludvig Veyergang; he was looking about short-sightedly, with his hat pressed down sideways over his forehead and his eye-glass in one eye, with light arrogance, as if he were only going about his lawful business, when he was ruining a young girl.
There was a noise and disturbance down at the door.
"Turn him out! Turn him out!"
At last the cry sounded over the whole room. It was an interlude, during which the audience climbed up on to tables and benches to try to see.
Nikolai would blindly and roughly have forced his way in, had not the police officer met him at the door, and with his own and the constable's united efforts managed to drag the strong, unruly smith out.
His one thought, while with a certain cool, temperate leniency they dragged him out into the half-darkness, was to keep so near that he could have an eye on the door. He felt with suppressed rage that if they drove him to it, he would sooner die than leave the garden now.
The music ceased. A number of people, hot and breathless, streamed out during a pause in the dancing.