Why shouldn’t he speak his mind, and end his doubts?  Ruth had been more tricksy than usual that day, and in a flow of spirits quite inconsistent, it would seem, in a young lady devoted to grave studies.

Had Ruth a premonition of Philip’s intention, in his manner?  It may be, for when the girls came down stairs, ready to walk to the cars; and met Philip and Harry in the hall, Ruth said, laughing,

“The two tallest must walk together” and before Philip knew how it happened Ruth had taken Harry’s arm, and his evening was spoiled.  He had too much politeness and good sense and kindness to show in his manner that he was hit.  So he said to Harry,

“That’s your disadvantage in being short.”  And he gave Alice no reason to feel during the evening that she would not have been his first choice for the excursion.  But he was none the less chagrined, and not a little angry at the turn the affair took.

The Hall was crowded with the fashion of the town.  The concert was one of those fragmentary drearinesses that people endure because they are fashionable; tours de force on the piano, and fragments from operas, which have no meaning without the setting, with weary pauses of waiting between; there is the comic basso who is so amusing and on such familiar terms with the audience, and always sings the Barber; the attitudinizing tenor, with his languishing “Oh, Summer Night;” the soprano with her “Batti Batti,” who warbles and trills and runs and fetches her breath, and ends with a noble scream that brings down a tempest of applause in the midst of which she backs off the stage smiling and bowing.  It was this sort of concert, and Philip was thinking that it was the most stupid one he ever sat through, when just as the soprano was in the midst of that touching ballad, “Comin’ thro’ the Rye” (the soprano always sings “Comin’ thro’ the Rye” on an encore)—­the Black Swan used to make it irresistible, Philip remembered, with her arch, “If a body kiss a body” there was a cry of “Fire!”

The hall is long and narrow, and there is only one place of egress.  Instantly the audience was on its feet, and a rush began for the door.  Men shouted, women screamed, and panic seized the swaying mass.  A second’s thought would have convinced every one that getting out was impossible, and that the only effect of a rush would be to crash people to death.  But a second’s thought was not given.  A few cried: 

“Sit down, sit down,” but the mass was turned towards the door.  Women were down and trampled on in the aisles, and stout men, utterly lost to self-control, were mounting the benches, as if to run a race over the mass to the entrance.

Philip who had forced the girls to keep their seats saw, in a flash, the new danger, and sprang to avert it.  In a second more those infuriated men would be over the benches and crushing Ruth and Alice under their boots.  He leaped upon the bench in front of them and struck out before him with all his might, felling one man who was rushing on him, and checking for an instant the movement, or rather parting it, and causing it to flow on either side of him.  But it was only for an instant; the pressure behind was too great, and, the next Philip was dashed backwards over the seat.