A man living in a declining economy in New York City wakes up late for work and rushes out of the door to catch the next train and try to make it to work so that he will not be fired. Waiting at the station platform, he sees a frail looking girl he supposes to be homeless. He tries to give her a dollar but she runs away crying near the edge of the platform. He tries again to slip the dollar into her coat but she resits and the train arrives. He gets on the train and goes to work, but still has the girl on his mind. He decides that he should have invited the girl to live with him and let him provide for her. He goes back the next day to tell her to come home with him, but she is not at the stop like usual. A custodian in the station sweeps under the bench and he watches her handkerchief swept into the trash. He looks down at the tracks as if looking for a train and sees a white splotch at the bottom. He remembers a time in the past where a dog trailed him home to his apartment after he fed it treats. He did not really want a dog, but decided that if it was a male he would take it home. The dog rolled over belly up in absolute loyalty, and the man saw that the dog was female, and kicked her so badly her back leg broke. The dog, loyal still, followed him home when he turned around, and followed him home when he was not looking. She snuck into his basement and died, and when her rotting body issued a call from the city, her body was removed and the chemicals used to clean the space left a white splotch like the one he sees on the tracks now, looking for the girl he wanted to help but did not because he was in a hurry to get to work. At an earlier time, he had asked himself the very similar moral dilemma. He wondered if a person in a hurry would push another person into the tracks of an oncoming train in order to get to where they were going on time. Standing in front of the white splotch on the tracks he cannot say for sure what happened, but he feels he has an answer.