left their seats to gather about him. A little group was formed.
Strangers sitting along the same row of seats stretched their necks and
looked. He had never received so much attention before, and now a fever
of expectancy took possession of him.

As he explained when he told me of his experience, it was for him an
altogether abnormal time. He felt like one floating in air. When he got
into bed after seeing so many people and hearing so many words of praise
his head whirled round and round. When he closed his eyes a crowd of
people invaded his room. It seemed as though the minds of all the people
of his city were centered on himself. The most absurd fancies took
possession of him. He imagined himself riding in a carriage through the
streets of a city. Windows were thrown open and people ran out at the
doors of houses. "There he is. That's him," they shouted, and at the
words a glad cry arose. The carriage drove into a street blocked with
people. A hundred thousand pairs of eyes looked up at him. "There you
are! What a fellow you have managed to make of yourself!" the eyes
seemed to be saying.

My friend could not explain whether the excitement of the people was due
to the fact that he had written a new poem or whether, in his new
government position, he had performed some notable act. The apartment
where he lived at that time was on a street perched along the top of a
cliff far out at the edge of the city and from his bedroom window he
could look down over trees and factory roofs to a river. As he could not
sleep and as the fancies that kept crowding in upon him only made him
more excited, he got out of bed and tried to think.

As would be natural under such circumstances, he tried to control his
thoughts, but when he sat by the window and was wide awake a most
unexpected and humiliating thing happened. The night was clear and fine.
There was a moon. He wanted to dream of the woman who was to be his
wife, think out lines for noble poems or make plans that would affect
his career. Much to his surprise his mind refused to do anything of the
sort.

At a corner of the street where he lived there was a small cigar store
and newspaper stand run by a fat man of forty and his wife, a small
active woman with bright grey eyes. In the morning he stopped there to
buy a paper before going down to the city. Sometimes he saw only the fat
man, but often the man had disappeared and the woman waited on him. She
was, as he assured me