He began to think of Natalie Swartz. There was something clear and innocent about her. Perhaps, without knowing, he had fallen in love with her, the daughter of a saloon-keeper and the drunken old Irish woman. That would explain much if it had happened.

He became aware of a man standing near him and turned. A workman in overalls stood a few feet away. He smiled. "I guess you have forgotten something," he said. John Webster smiled also. "Well yes," he said, "a good many things. I'm nearly forty years old and I guess I have forgotten to live. What about you?"

The workman smiled again. "I mean the cigarettes," he said and pointed to the burning and smoking end of the cigarette that lay on the floor. John Webster put his foot on it and then dropping the other cigarette to the floor put his foot on that. He and the workman stood looking at each other as but a little while before he had looked at Natalie Swartz. "I wonder if I might go within his house also," he thought. "Well, I thank you. I had forgotten. My mind was far away," he said aloud. The workman nodded. "I am sometimes like that myself," he explained.

II

John Webster rode to his house on a street car. It was half past twelve o'clock when he arrived and, as he had anticipated, he was not expected. Behind his house, a rather commonplace looking frame affair, there was a little garden and two apple trees. He walked around the house and saw his daughter, Jane Webster, lying in a hammock hung between the trees. There was an old rocking chair under one of the trees near the hammock and he went and sat in it. His daughter was surprised at his coming upon her so, at the noon hour when he so seldom appeared. "Well, hello dad," she said listlessly, sitting up and dropping a book she had been reading on the grass at his feet. "Is there anything wrong?" she asked. He shook his head.

Picking up the book he began to read and her head dropped again to the cushion in the hammock. The book was a modern novel of the period. It concerned life in the old city of New Orleans. He read a few pages. It was no doubt the sort of thing that might take one out of oneself, take one away from the dulness of life. A young man was stealing along a street in the darkness and had a cloak wrapped about his shoulders. Overhead the moon shone. The magnolia trees were in blossom filling the air with perfume. The young man was very handsome. The scene of the novel was laid in the time before the Civil War and he owned a great many slaves.

John Webster closed the book. There was no need of reading. When he was still a young man he had sometimes read such books himself. They took one out of oneself, made the dulness of everyday existence seem less terrible.