A strange rapid little circle of thought welled up within him as he stood thus, without embarrassment, looking into Natalie's eyes. How clean she had kept her house. The old Irish mother in her cups might shout and rave calling her daughter a whore, as she sometimes did, but the words did not penetrate into the house of Natalie The little thoughts within John Webster became words, not expressed aloud, but words that ran like voices shouting softly within himself. "She is my beloved," one of the voices said. "You shall go into the house of Natalie," said another. A slow blush spread over Natalie's face and she smiled. "You are not very well lately. Are you worried about something?" she said. She had never spoken to him before in just that way. There was a suggestion of intimacy about it. As a matter of fact the washing machine business was at that time doing very well. Orders were coming in rapidly and the factory was humming with life. There were no notes to be paid at the bank. "Why I am very well," he said, "very happy and very well, at just this moment."

He went on into the outer office and the three women employed there and the book-keeper too stopped working to look at him. Their looking up from their desks was just a kind of gesture. They meant nothing by it. The book-keeper came and asked a question regarding some account. "Why, I would like it if you would use your own judgement about that," John Webster said. He was vaguely conscious the question had been concerned with some man's credit. Some man, in a far away place had written to order twenty-four washing machines. He would sell them in a store. The question was, when the time came, would he pay the manufacturer?

The whole structure of business, the thing in which all the men and women in America were, like himself, in some way involved, was an odd affair. Really he had not thought much about it. His father had owned this factory and had died. He had not wanted to be a manufacturer. What had he wanted to be"? His father had certain things called patents. Then the son, that was himself, was grown and had begun to manage the factory. He got married and after a time his mother died. Then the factory belonged to him. He made the washing machines that were intended to take the dirt out of people's clothes and employed men to make them and other men to go forth and sell them. He stood in the outer office seeing, for the first time, all life of modern men as a strange involved thing. "It wants understanding and a lot of thinking about," he said aloud. The book-keeper had turned to go back to his desk, but stopped and turned, thinking he had been spoken to. Near where John Webster stood a woman was addressing circulars. She looked up and smiled suddenly and he liked her smiling so. "There is a way something happens people suddenly and unexpectedly come close to each other," he thought and went out through the door and along the board walk towards the factory.