Walking along the street that afternoon he could not stop his body’s quivering as the presence of animosity began to keep pace with him. Neither wholly here nor there, not on that corner nor on this, but a shadow of it on one passing face, and a peculiar glance from a man coming out of a store. A truck driver cursing at a flat tire was, strangely, cursing at him. Ridiculous … and there. Always there beside him. Utterly ridiculous and utterly there.

The subway that night rocked him home. Strangely, these nights he liked the subway crowded. He would catch the train at two minutes before five and get a seat, and then at succeeding stops people would rush in and he would be buried there in his seat surrounded by those standing. And sitting there this night he let his mind get lost in the patterns of a woman’s dress which was no more than a foot from his face, and in this privacy he saw the truth. In the offices he had called on there must have been jobs open. There was a war on. Personnel men were at a premium because the companies were hiring thousands of workers. But for him there was nothing but the polite smile of refusal. Because he was talking to other personnel men, men who had the same instructions he had had when he worked for Gargan. And they were as sharp at classifying people as he had been. The fact was that he would never again be a personnel man. It had been his one pride in life, the thing that had made it possible for him to go on without a wife, and he would never have it again; that thrill of hiring and being responsible would never again be his. What in God’s name could he be now, at his age? He thought of taking a factory job of some kind. Or simply a clerk’s job, or something in an office, or anything … He could not, he simply could not. He was a personnel man, a …

With the sixth sense of a subway traveler he knew his station was approaching, and he managed to rise to his feet. In former times when passengers had refused to let him through to the door he had shouldered his way with some play at indignation. Now he rather gently drew the attention of the person in his path by a tap on the arm – and the action itself broke his heart. The train slowed and the crowd pressed him from behind. The train stopped. The doors slid open. His face was pushed into the back of the man ahead. For an instant he could not inhale and deep within him a weeping threatened to break open and he had to get out. The mass began to move now, impelled by their hunger and their need to get home and change clothes, and suddenly he was pushed out of the train and flung against a fat man who was standing directly in front of the doorway. In falling he threw his foot forward to stop himself and it pounded down on the fat man’s toes, and to right himself completely he had to grab onto the man’s lapel for an instant. The fat man struck his hand away as sharply as the crowd surged past. Mr Newman stood panting into the face of the fat man who stepped to the doors and, holding them back while he spoke, shouted between his teeth, ‘You people! When are you going to learn your manners!’