When he slept he did not sleep lightly and no fancies visited his dreams. What should have been a sweet time of renewal became a heavy time filled with distorted dreams.

And then, after the doors of Natalie's body had been swung open for him, he became aware. After that evening when they had knelt together in the darkness it was hard for him to go home in the evening and sit at table with his wife and daughter. "Well, I can't do it," he told himself and ate his evening meal at a restaurant down-town. He stayed about, walking in unfrequented streets, talking or in silence beside Natalie and then went with her to her own house, far out at the edge of town. People saw them walking thus together and, as there was no effort at concealment, there was a blaze of talk in the town.

When John Webster went home to his own house his wife and daughter had already gone to bed. "I am very busy at the shop. Do not expect to see much of me for a time," he had said to his wife on the morning after he had told Natalie of his love.

He did not intend to stay on in the washing machine business or to continue his married life. What he would do he didn't quite know. He would live with Natalie for one thing. The time had come to do that.

He had spoken of it to Natalie on that first evening of their intimacy. On that evening, after the others were all gone they went to walk together. As they went through the streets people in the houses were sitting down to the evening meal, but they did not think of eating.

John Webster's tongue had become loosened and he did a great deal of talking to which Natalie listened in silence. Of the people of the town those he did not know all became romantic figures to him. His fancy wanted to play about them and he let it. They went along a residence street towards the open country beyond and he kept speaking of the people in the houses. "Now Natalie, my woman, you see all these houses here," he said waving his arms to right and left, "well, what do you and I know about what goes on back of these walls'?" He kept taking deep breaths as he went along, just as he had done back there at the office when he had run across the room to kneel at Natalie's feet. The little voices within him were still talking. He had been something like this sometimes when he was a boy, but no one had ever understood the riotous play of his fancy and in time he had come to think that letting his fancy go was all foolishness. Then when he was a young man and had married there had come a sharp new flare-up of the fanciful life, but then it had been frozen in him by the fear and the vulgarity that is born of fears. Now it was playing madly. "Now you see Natalie," he cried, stopping on the sidewalk to take hold of her two hands and swinging them madly back and forth, "now you see, here's how it is. These houses along here look like just ordinary houses, such as you and I live in, but they aren't like that at all. The outer walls are, you see, just things stuck up, like scenery on a stage. A breath can blow the walls down or an outburst of flames can consume them all in an hour. I'll bet you what I'll bet that what you think is that the people back of the walls of these houses are just ordinary people. They aren't at all. You're all wrong about that Natalie, my love. The women in the rooms back of these walls are all fair sweet women and you should just go into the rooms. They are hung with beautiful pictures and tapestry and the women have jewels on their hands and in their hair.