noon
For the present , he was getting a queer sort of comfort out of what would ordinarily be labeled the discomforts of his surroundings : the fierce dry heat of the car , the smells -- that of oranges was perhaps the strongest of these -- the raucous persistence of the train butcher hawking his wares ; and , most of all , in the very density of the crowd . This is one of the comforts that many a member of the favored , chauffeur-driven , servant-attended class lives his life in ignorance of , the nervous relief that comes from ceasing , for a while , to be an isolated , sharply bounded , perfectly visible entity , and subsiding , indistinguishably , into a mere mass of humanity ; in being nobody for a while . It was a want which , in the old days before his marriage , Rodney had often , unconsciously , felt and gratified . He had enjoyed being herded about , riding in crowded street-cars , working his way through the press in the down-town streets during the noon hour . He was no more conscious of it now , but it was distinctly pleasant to him to be identified for the conductor merely by a bit of blue pasteboard with punch marks in it , stuck in his hat-band . The pleasant torpor did n't last long , because presently , the rhythmic thud of the wheels began singing to him the same damned tune that had dogged his footsteps earlier that morning : `` I 'm all alone , you 're all alone ; come on , let 's be lonesome together . '' This was intolerable !