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238 Kempinsky, reading and rereading the letter which her soldier son had sent her from France; or—

What did it matter?

Whoever was sitting behind that lighted window was happy—happy—and the man's imagination choked, his mind became flushed and congested.

He was quite unconscious of his surroundings. The stillness of the streets seemed magical, the loneliness absolute. Only from very far came sounds: the Elevated rattling with a steely, throaty sob; a surface-car clanking and wheezing; a hoarse Klaxon blaring snobbishly; a stammering, alcoholic voice throwing the tail-end of a gutter song to the moist purple veils of the night.

But he did not hear.

He was conscious only of the lighted window, high up. It seemed to glitter nervously, to call to him, to stretch out, as if trying to communicate to him an emotion it had borrowed by contact with something—with somebody.

That was just the trouble. He wondered who that Somebody was, what that Something might be. Whoever it was, it seemed urgent, clamorous. Silently clamorous. His subconsciousness grew