He tried to think about the matter, but his mind didn't work very well. It was a blank. What happened was that he walked along with his shoulders thrown back and felt childishly important about nothing. He had to be careful or he would begin laughing at himself. There was within him a lurking fear that in a few minutes he would begin laughing at the figure of John Webster as a man of national importance in the industrial world and the fear made him hurry faster than ever. When he got to the railroad tracks that ran down to his factory he was almost running. It was amazing. The advertising man from Chicago could use big words, apparently without being in any danger of suddenly beginning to laugh. When John Webster was a young fellow and had just come out of college, that was when he read a great many books and sometimes thought he would like to become a writer of books, at that time he had often thought he wasn't cut out to be a business man at all. Perhaps he was right. A man who hadn't any more sense than to laugh at himself had better not try to become a figure of national importance in the industrial world, that was sure. It wanted serious fellows to carry off such positions successfully.

Well now he had begun to be a little sorry for himself, that he was not cut out to be a big figure in the industrial world. What a childish fellow he was. Would he never grow up?

Hearing the rumble of a train, far away somewhere in the distance John Webster got off the tracks. There was, at just that place, a high embankment beside the river along which he could walk. "I don't intend to come near being killed by a train as I was this morning when that young negro saved me," he thought. He looked away to the west and to the evening sun and then down at the bed of the stream. Now the river was low and only a narrow channel of water ran through wide banks of caked mud.

"I know what I am going to do," he told himself resolutely. Quickly a plan formed itself in his mind. He would go to his office and hurry through any letters that had come in. Then, without looking at Natalie Swartz, he would get up and go away. There was a train for Chicago at eight o'clock and he would tell his wife he had business in the city and would take the train. What a man had to do in life was to face facts and then act. He would go to Chicago and find himself a woman. When it came right down to the truth he would go on a regular bat. He would find himself a woman and he would get drunk and if he felt like doing it would stay drunk for several days.