Daylight was slowly fading. Though it was only half-after six of an evening in June, the sun was already invisible, smudged out by a portentous bank of purplish cloud whose profile was edged with fire-of-gold against a sky of tarnished blue—a sky that seemed dimmed with the sweat of day-long heat and toil. The city air was close and moveless, and the cloud-bank was lifting very slowly from behind the Jersey hills; it might be several hours before the promised storm would break and bring relief to a parched and weary people.
At length despairing of her desire, the girl moved out to the middle of the street and boarded the next open car of the Lexington Avenue line.
She was able to find standing-room only between two seats toward the rear, where smoking was permitted. She stood just inside the running-board, grasping the back of the forward seat. Her hand rested between the shoulders of two men. She was the only woman in that section. Behind her were ten masculine knees in a row, before her five masculine heads: ten men crowding the two transverse benches, some smoking, all stolidly absorbed in newspapers and indifferent to the intrusion of a woman. None dreamed of offering the girl a seat; nor did she find this anything remarkable, in whom use had bred the habit of accepting without question such everyday phenomena. If she was weary, so were the men; if she desired the consideration due her sex, then must she enfranchise herself from the sexless struggle for a living wage....
The car, swerving into Twenty-third Street, plunged on to and turned north on Lexington Avenue. Thereafter its progress consisted of a series of frantic leaps from street-corner to street-corner. When it was in motion, there was a grateful rush of air; when at pause, the heat was stifling and the fumes of cigarettes, pipes, and cheap cigars blended to manufacture a mephitic reek. A slight sweat dewed the face of the girl, and her colour faded to pallor. Her feet and legs were aching, her back ached with much lifting of boxes to and from shelves, her head ached—chiefly because of the inevitable malnutrition of a shop-girl's lunch.
From time to time more passengers were taken on; a lesser number alighted: Joan found herself obliged to edge farther in between the rank of knees and the rigid back of the forward seat. By the time the car crossed Forty-second Street, she was at the inside guard-rail: ten persons, half of them standing, were occupying a space meant for five.
It was then, or only a trifle later, that she became conscious of the knee which the man behind her was purposely pressing against her. Then for a minute or two she was let alone. But she was sick with apprehension....
She stood it as long as she could. Then abruptly she twisted round and faced her persecutor.
Before her eyes, half blinded by rage and disgust, his face swam like the mask of an incubus—a blur of red flesh fixed in an insolent smirk.
She was dimly aware of curious glances lifting to the sound of her tremulous voice:
"Must I leave this car? Or will you let me alone?"