at least twenty times in telling me his tale, a
very ordinary person with nothing special or notable about her, but for
some reason he could not explain being in her presence stirred him
profoundly. During that week in the midst of his distraction she was the
only person he knew who stood out clear and distinct in his mind. When
he wanted so much to think noble thoughts, he could think only of her.
Before he knew what was happening his imagination had taken hold of the
notion of having a love affair with the woman.

"I could not understand myself," he declared, in telling me the story.
"At night, when the city was quiet and when I should have been asleep, I
thought about her all the time. After two or three days of that sort of
thing the consciousness of her got into my daytime thoughts. I was
terribly muddled. When I went to see the woman who is now my wife I
found that my love for her was in no way affected by my vagrant
thoughts. There was but one woman in the world I wanted to live with me
and to be my comrade in undertaking to improve my own character and my
position in the world, but for the moment, you see, I wanted this other
woman to be in my arms. She had worked her way into my being. On all
sides people were saying I was a big man who would do big things, and
there I was. That evening when I went to the theatre I walked home
because I knew I would be unable to sleep, and to satisfy the annoying
impulse in myself I went and stood on the sidewalk before the tobacco
shop. It was a two story building, and I knew the woman lived upstairs
with her husband. For a long time I stood in the darkness with my body
pressed against the wall of the building and then I thought of the two
of them up there, no doubt in bed together. That made me furious.

"Then I grew more furious at myself. I went home and got into bed shaken
with anger. There are certain books of verse and some prose writings
that have always moved me deeply, and so I put several books on a table
by my bed.

"The voices in the books were like the voices of the dead. I did not
hear them. The words printed on the lines would not penetrate into my
consciousness. I tried to think of the woman I loved, but her figure had
also become something far away, something with which I for the moment
seemed to have nothing to do. I rolled and tumbled about in the bed. It
was a miserable experience.

"On Thursday morning I went into the store. There stood the woman alone.