"And once there was a man whose pictures I see in the papers the next day as having committed suicide. I remembered him in a minute. Well, no, he didn't look like he was going to commit suicide. He looked just about like all the other passengers--tired and sleepy and sort of down." The mild-faced conductor helped one of his passengers off. "Don't you ever wonder what keeps these people out or where they're going at this time of night?" the newspaper man pursued as the car started up again. "Well," said the conductor, "not exactly. I've got it figured out there's nothing much to that and that they're all kind of alike. They've been to parties or callin' on their girls or just got restless or somethin'. What's the difference? All I can say about 'em is that you get so after years you feel sorry for 'em all. And they're all alike--people as ride on the night run cars are just more tired than the people I remember used to ride on the day run cars I was on before my wife died." The clock in a candy store window says "Three-twelve." A few windows down, another clock says "Three-five." The newspaper man walks to his home studying the clocks. They all disagree as before. And yet their faces are all identical--as identical as the faces of the owl car passengers seem to the conductor. And here is a clock that has stopped. It says "Twenty after four." And the newspaper man thinks of the picture the conductor identified in the papers the next morning. The picture said something like "Twenty after four" at the wrong time. It's all a bit mixed up. CONFESSIONS The rain mutters in the night and the pavements like dark mirrors are alive with impressionistic cartoons of the city. The little, silent street with its darkened store windows and rain-veiled arc lamps is as lonely as a far-away train whistle. Over the darkened stores are stone and wooden flat buildings. Here, too, the lights have gone out. People sleep. The rain falls. The gleaming pavements amuse themselves with reflections. I have an hour to wait. From the musty smelling hallway where I stand the scene is like an old print--an old London print--that I have always meant to buy and put in a frame but have never found. * * * * *