"Nonsense—who's afraid?"
"I am. I don't mind saying it. This is more than I bargained for."
The woman scrambled to her feet and limped back into the doorway.
Elena shivered. "I didn't know such women lived on this earth."
"To say nothing of living but a stone's throw from your own door," he continued.
"Let's go back," she pleaded.
"No. A thing like this is merely one more reason why we should keep on. This only shows that the world we live in isn't quite perfect, as the Governor seems to think. These Socialists may be right after all. Now that we've started let's hear their side of it. Come on! Don't be a quitter!"
Norman seized her arm and hurried through the swiftly moving throng of the under-world—gambling touts, thieves, cut-throats, pick-pockets, opium fiends, drunkards, thugs, carousing miners, and sailors—but above all, everywhere, omnipresent, the abandoned woman—painted, bedizened, lurching through the streets, hanging in doorways, clinging to men on the sidewalks, beckoning from windows, singing vulgar songs on crude platforms among throngs of half-drunken men, whirling past doors and windows in dance-halls, their cracked voices shrill and rasping above the din of cheap music.
Elena stopped suddenly and clung heavily to Norman's arm.
"Please, Norman, let's go back. I can't endure this."