Hito, tito, what was the use thinking of turning back when it was too late to turn back? If, in the end, he and Natalie found they could not live together there was still life. Life was life. One might still find a way to live a life. * * * * * John Webster began to grow courageous again. He looked toward the dark houses along the street and smiled. He became like a child, playing a game with his fellows of the Wisconsin town. In the game he was some kind of public character, who because of some brave deed was receiving the applause of the people who lived in the houses. He imagined himself as riding through the street in a carriage. The people were sticking their heads out of the windows of the houses and shouting, and he was turning his head from side to side, bowing and smiling. As Natalie was not looking he enjoyed himself for a moment, playing the game. As he walked along he kept turning his head from side to side and bowing. There was a rather absurd smile on his lips. The old Harry! “Chinaberries grow on a chinaberry tree!” All the same it would be better if Natalie did not make such a racket with her feet walking on stone and brick sidewalks. One might be found out. It might be that, quite suddenly, without any warning, all the people, now sleeping so peacefully in the dark houses along the street, would sit up in their beds and begin to laugh. That would be terrible and it would be just the sort of thing John Webster would himself do, were he a respectable man in bed with a lawfully wedded wife, and saw some other man doing some such fool thing as he was now doing. It was annoying. The night was warm but John Webster felt somewhat cold. He shivered. It was no doubt due to the fact that he was tired. Perhaps thinking of the respectable married people lying in beds in the houses, between which he and Natalie were passing, had made him shiver. One could be very cold, being a respectable married man and lying in bed with a respectable wife. A thought that had been coming and going in his mind for two weeks now came again: “Perhaps I am insane and have infected Natalie, and for that matter my daughter Jane too, with my insanity.” There was no use crying over spilled milk. “What’s the use thinking about the matter now?” “Diddle de di do!” “Chinaberries grow on a chinaberry tree!” He and Natalie had come out of the section of town where working people lived and were now passing before houses in which lived merchants, small manufacturers, such men as John Webster had himself been, lawyers, doctors, and such fellows too. Now they were passing the house in which his own banker lived. “The stingy cuss. He has plenty of money. Why doesn’t he build himself a larger and finer house?” To the east, dimly seen through trees and above tree tops, there was a light place coming into the sky.