"A fine business if I, a respectable business man with a wife and a grown daughter get myself involved in an affair with Natalie Swartz, the daughter of a man who when he was alive ran a low saloon and of that terrible old Irish woman who is the scandal of the town and who when she is drunk talks and yells so that the neighbours threaten to have her arrested and are only held back because they have sympathy for the daughters.

"The fact is that a man may work and work to make a decent place for himself and then by a foolish act all may be destroyed. I'll have to watch myself a little. I've been working too steadily. Perhaps I'd better take a vacation. I don't want to get into a mess," he thought. How glad he was that, although he had been in a state all day long, he had said nothing to any one that would betray his condition.

He stood with his hand on the railing of the stairs. At any rate he had been doing a lot of thinking for the last two or three hours. "I haven't been wasting my time."

A notion came. After he married and when he had found out his wife was frightened and driven within herself by every outburst of passion and that as a result there was not much joy in making love to her he had formed a habit of going off on secret expeditions. It had been easy enough to get away. He told his wife he was going on a business trip. Then he went somewhere, to the city of Chicago usually. He did not go to one of the big hotels, but to some obscure place on a side street.

Night came and he set out to find himself a woman. Always he went through the same kind of rather silly performance. He was not given to drinking, but he now took several drinks. One might go at once to some house where women were to be had, but he really wanted something else. He spent hours wandering in the streets.

There was a dream. One vainly hoped to find, wandering about somewhere, a woman who by some miracle would love with freedom and abandon. Along through the streets one went usually in dark badly lighted places where there were factories and warehouses and poor little dwellings. One wanted a golden woman to step up out of the filth of the place in which he walked. It was insane and silly and one knew these things, but one persisted insanely. Amazing conversations were imagined. Out from the shadow of one of the dark buildings the woman was to step. She was also lonely, hungry, defeated. One went boldly up to her and began at once a conversation filled with strange and beautiful words. Love came flooding their two bodies.

Well perhaps that was exaggerated a little. No doubt one was never quite fool enough to expect anything so wonderful as all that. At any rate what one did was to wander about in the dark streets thus for hours and in the end take up with some prostitute. The two hurried silently off into a little room. Uh. There was always the feeling, "perhaps other men have been in here with her already to-night." There was a halting attempt at conversation. Could they get to know each other, this woman and this man? The woman had a businesslike air. The night was not over and her work was done at night. Too much time must not be wasted. From her point of view a great deal of time had to be wasted in any event. Often one walked half the night without making any money at all.