There he was, you see, a man of the medium height, with slightly greying black hair, broad shoulders, large hands, and a full, somewhat sad and perhaps sensual face, and he was much given to the habit of smoking cigarettes. At the time of which I am speaking he found it very hard to sit still in one spot and to do his work and so he continually moved about. Getting quickly up from his chair in the factory office he went out into the shops. To do so he had to pass through a large outer office where there was a book-keeper, a desk for his factory superintendent and other desks for three girls who also did some kind of office work, sent out circulars regarding the washing machine to possible buyers, and attended to other details.

In his own office there was a broad-faced woman of twenty-four who was his secretary. She had a strong, well-made body, but was not very handsome. Nature had given her a broad flat face and thick lips, but her skin was very clear and she had very clear fine eyes.

A thousand times, since he had become a manufacturer, John Webster had walked thus out of his own office into the general office of the factory and out through a door and along a board walk to the factory itself, but not as he now walked.

Well he had suddenly begun walking in a new world, that was a fact that could not be denied. An idea came to him. "Perhaps I am becoming for tome reason a little insane," he thought. The thought did not alarm him. It was almost pleasing. "I like myself better as I am now," he concluded.

He was about to pass out of his small inner office into the larger office and then on into the factory, but stopped by the door. The woman who worked there in the room with him was named Natalie Swartz. She was the daughter of a German saloon-keeper of the town who had married an Irishwoman and then had died leaving no money. He remembered what he had heard of her and her life. There were two daughters and the mother had an ugly temper and was given to drink. An older daughter had become a teacher in the town schools and Natalie had learned stenography and had come to work in the office of the factory. They lived in a small frame house at the edge of town and sometimes the old mother got drunk and abused the two girls. They were good girls and worked hard, but in her cups the old mother accused them of all sorts of immorality. All the neighbours felt sorry for them.

John Webster stood at the door with the doorknob in his hand. He was looking hard at Natalie, but did not feel in the least embarrassed nor strangely enough did she. She was arranging some papers, but stopped working and looked directly at him. It was an odd sensation to be able to look thus, directly into another person's eyes. It was as though Natalie were a house and he were looking in through a window. Natalie herself lived within the house that was her body. What a quiet strong dear person she was and how strange it was that he had been able to sit near her every day for two or three years without ever before thinking of looking into her house. "How many houses there are within which I have not looked," he thought.