Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/448

378 He wondered if he might now presume on that brief acquaintanceship to go and talk with the man. He had been thinking rather unusual thoughts to come into a man's head and perhaps, if he could talk with some other man and in particular with a man whose business in life it was to have thoughts and to understand thought something might be gained.

There was a narrow strip of grass between the sidewalk and the roadway and along this John Webster began to run. He just grabbed his hat in his hand and ran bareheaded for perhaps two hundred yards and then stopped and looked quietly up and down the street.

It was all right, after all. Apparently no one had seen his strange performance. There were no people sitting on the porches of the houses along the street. He thanked God for that.

Ahead of him the college professor went soberly along with a book under his arm, unaware that he was followed. When he saw that his absurd performance had escaped notice John Webster laughed. "Well, I went to college myself once. I've heard enough college professors talk. I don't know why I should expect anything from one of that stripe."

Perhaps to speak of the things that had been in his mind that day something almost like a new language would be required.

There was that thought about Natalie being a house kept clean and sweet for living, a house into which one might go gladly and joyfully. Could he, a washing machine manufacturer of a Wisconsin town, stop on the street a college professor and say—"I want to know, Mr College Professor, if your house is clean and sweet for living so that people may come into it and, if it is so, I want you to tell me how you went about it to clean your house."

Weary tired moments had been coming to him all day long and now another came. He was like a train running through a mountainous country and occasionally passing through tunnels. In one moment the world about him was all alive and then it was just a dull dreary place that frightened one. The thought that came to him was something like this—"Well, here I am. There is no use denying it, something unusual has happened to me. Yesterday I was one thing. Now I am something else. About me everywhere are these people I have always known, here in this town. Down that street there before me, at the corner there, in that stone building, is the bank where I do the banking business for my factory. It happens