My visitor’s mind slipped off into a new channel and he told me the story of his life in the New England town during the long months of the Spring, Summer and early Fall when, as I understood the matter, he did no writing. Well, he played golf, he went to swim in the sea, he ran his automobile. In the New England town he owned a large white frame house where he lived with his wife, with his daughter when she was at home from school, and with two or three servants. He told me of his life there, of his working through the Summer months in a garden, of his going sometimes in the afternoons for long walks about the town and out along the country roads. He grew quieter and putting my book back on the table sat down again on the edge of the bed. “It’s odd,” he said. “You see, I have lived in that one town now for a good many years. There are people there I would like to know better. I would like really to know them, I mean. Men and women go along the road past my place. There is a man of about my own age whose wife has left him. He lives alone in a little house and cooks his own food. Sometimes he also goes for a walk and comes past my place and we are supposed to be friends. Something of the kind is in the wind. He stops sometimes by my garden and stands looking over and we talk but do not say much to each other. The devil, that’s the way it goes you see--there he is by the fence and there am I with a hoe in my hand. I walk to where he stands and also lean on the fence. We speak of the vegetables growing in my garden. Would you believe it we never speak of anything but the vegetables or the flowers perhaps? It’s a fact. There he stands. Did I tell you his wife has left him? He wants to speak of that--I’m sure of it. To tell the truth when he set out from his own house he was quite determined to come up to my place and tell me all about everything, how he feels, why his wife has left him and all about it. The man who went away with his wife was his best friend. It’s quite a story, you see. Everyone in our town knows about it but they do not know how the man himself feels as he sits up there in his house all alone.” “That’s what he has made up his mind to talk to me about but he can’t do it, you see. All he does is to stand by my fence and speak of growing vegetables. ‘Your lettuce is doing very well. The weeds do grow like the deuce, don’t they though? That’s a nice bed of flowers you have over there near the house.’”