"Yes, this is New York," said the man, folding up his paper, and
springing to his feet. The narrow aisle was filled with many others who
had been prompter still; and Theron stood, bag in hand, waiting till
this energetic throng should have pushed itself bodily past him forth
from the car. Then he himself made his way out, drifting with a sense of
helplessness in their resolute wake. There rose in his mind the sudden
conviction that he would be too late. All the passengers in the forward
sleepers would be gone before he could get there. Yet even this terror
gave him no new power to get ahead of anybody else in the tightly packed
throng.

Once on the broad platform, the others started off briskly; they all
seemed to know just where they wanted to go, and to feel that no instant
of time was to be lost in getting there. Theron himself caught some of
this urgent spirit, and hurled himself along in the throng with reckless
haste, knocking his bag against peoples' legs, but never pausing for
apology or comment until he found himself abreast of the locomotive at
the head of the train. He drew aside from the main current here, and
began searching the platform, far and near, for those he had travelled
so far to find.

The platform emptied itself. Theron lingered on in puzzled hesitation,
and looked about him. In the whole immense station, with its acres of
tracks and footways, and its incessantly shifting processions of people,
there was visible nobody else who seemed also in doubt, or who appeared
capable of sympathizing with indecision in any form. Another train came
in, some way over to the right, and before it had fairly stopped,
swarms of eager men began boiling out of each end of each car, literally
precipitating themselves over one another, it seemed to Theron, in their