"Diddle de di do,

Diddle de di do,

Chinaberries grow on a Chinaberry tree.

Diddle de di do."

What in the name of the bearded men, who came into the queen's bed-chamber when the king of Rome was born, does he mean by that? What is a Chinaberry tree?

John Webster talked to his daughter, sat with his arm about her talking, and back of him, and unseen, his wife struggled and fought to put back into its place the iron lid one should always keep tightly clamped down on the opening of the well of unexpressed thoughts within oneself.

There was a man who had come naked into her naked presence in the dusk of the late afternoon of a day long ago. He had come in to her and had done a thing to her. There had been a rape of the unconscious self. That had been in time forgotten or forgiven, but now he was doing it again. He was talking now. Of what was he talking? Were there not things of which one never talked? For what purpose the deep well within oneself except that it be a place into which one could put the things that must not be talked about?

*

Now John Webster was trying to tell the whole story of his attempt at love-making with the woman he had married.

The writing of letters containing the word "love" had come to something. After a time, and when he had sent off several such letters written in the hotel writing-rooms, and just when he was beginning to think he would never get an answer to one of them and might as well give the whole matter up, an answer had come. Then there had burst from him a flood of letters.

He was still then going about from town to town trying to sell washing machines to merchants, but that only took a part of each day. There was left the late afternoons, mornings when he arose early and sometimes went for a walk along the streets of one of the towns before breakfast, the long evenings and the Sundays.

He was full of unaccountable energy all through that time. It must have been because he was in love. If one were not in love one could not feel so alive. In the early mornings, and in the evenings as he walked about, looking at houses and people, everyone suddenly seemed close to him. Men and women came out of houses and went along the streets, factory whistles blew, men and boys went in and out at the doors of factories.

He was standing by a tree on a strange street of a strange town in the evening. In a nearby house a child cried and a woman's voice talked to it in low tones. His fingers gripped the bark of the tree. He wanted to run into the house where the child was crying, to take the child out of its mother's arms and quiet it, to kiss the mother perhaps. What a thing it would be if he could only go along a street shaking men by the hand, putting his arms about the shoulders of young girls.