They gazed wistfully across at him whenever he came up to the barrier; and he feigned a conversation with them and tried to convince them that the stamp of inferiority which their poverty put upon them was just, or if not just, then inevitable.

He argued with them that the sort of barrier which here prevented their being friends with him, if they wished it, ran invisibly through society everywhere but he felt ashamed before their kind, patient, intelligent faces, and found himself wishing to excuse the fact he was defending.

Was it any worse, he asked them, than their not being invited to the entertainments of people in upper Fifth Avenue?
He made them own that if they were let across that barrier the whole second cabin would have a logical right to follow; and they were silenced.

But they continued to gape at him with their sincere, gentle eyes whenever he returned to the barrier in his walk, till he could bear it no longer, and strolled off toward the steerage.
There was more reason why the passengers there should be penned into a little space of their own in the sort of pit made by the narrowing deck at the bow.

They seemed to be all foreigners, and if any had made their fortunes in our country they were hiding their prosperity in the return to their own.