out.

There was something in the event which discharged him of all
obligation to define himself of this or that relation to life. He must
have had some relation to it such as we all bear, and since the
question of him has come up with me again I have tried him in several
of those relations--father, son, brother, husband--without identifying
him very satisfyingly in either.

As I say, he seemed by what happened to be liberated from the debt we
owe in that kind to one another's curiosity, sympathy, or whatever. I
cannot say what errand it was that brought him to the place, a
strange, large, indeterminate open room, where several of us sat
occupied with different sorts of business, but, as it seems to me now,
by only a provisional right to the place. Certainly the corner
allotted to my own editorial business was of temporary assignment; I
was there until we could find a more permanent office. The man had
nothing to do with me or with the publishers; he had no manuscript, or
plan for an article which he wished to propose and to talk himself
into writing, so that he might bring it with a claim to acceptance, as
though he had been asked to write it. In fact, he did not even look of
the writing sort; and his affair with some other occupant of that
anomalous place could have been in no wise literary. Probably it was
some kind of insurance business, and I have been left with the
impression of fussiness in his conduct of it; he had to my involuntary
attention an effect of conscious unwelcome with it.

After subjectively dealing with this impression, I ceased to notice
him, without being able to give myself to my own work. The day was
choking hot, of a damp that clung about one, and forbade one so much
effort as was needed to relieve one of one's discomfort; to pull at
one's wilted collar and loosen the linen about one's reeking neck
meant exertion which one willingly forbore; it was less suffering to
suffer passively than to suffer actively. The day was of the sort
which begins with a brisk heat, and then, with a falling breeze,
decays into mere swelter. To come indoors out of the sun was no escape
from the heat; my window opened upon a shaded alley where the air was
damper without being cooler than the air within.

At last I lost myself in my work with a kind of humid interest in the
psychological inquiry of a contributor who was dealing with a matter
rather beyond his power. I did not think that he was fortunate in
having