As she stood watching her employer eat the food she had prepared for herself, Katherine thought proudly of an evening long before when she had quite recklessly become the sweetheart of another man. She remembered the fight John Webster had once made for her and thought with contempt of the woman who was her employer’s wife. “That such a man should have such a woman,” she thought, recalling the long heavy figure of Mrs. Webster. As though aware of her thoughts the man again turned and smiled at her. “I am eating the food she had prepared for herself,” he told himself, and got quickly up from the table. He went out into the hallway and having taken his hat from a rack lighted a cigarette. Then he returned to the dining room door. The woman stood by the table looking at him and he in turn looked at her. There was no embarrassment. “If I should go away with Natalie and she should become like Katherine it would be fine,” he thought. “Well, well, good bye,” he said haltingly and turning walked rapidly out of the house. * * * * * As John Webster walked along the street the sun was shining and as there was a light breeze a few leaves were falling from the maple shade trees with which the streets were lined. Soon there would be frost and the trees would be all afire with color. If one could only be aware, glorious days were ahead. Even in the Wisconsin town one might have glorious days. There was a little pang of hunger, a new kind of hunger, within him as he stopped and stood for a moment looking up and down the residence street on which he had been walking. Two hours before, lying naked on the bed in his own house, he had been having the thoughts concerning clothes and houses. It was a charming thought to play with but brought sadness too. Why was it that so many houses along the street were ugly? Were people unaware? Could anyone be quite completely unaware? Could one wear ugly commonplace clothes, live always in an ugly or commonplace house in a commonplace street of a commonplace town and remain always unaware? Now he was thinking of things he decided had better be left out of the thoughts of a business man. However, for this one day, he would give himself over to the thinking of any thought that came into his head. To-morrow things would be different. He would become again what he had always been (with the exception of a few slips, times when he had been rather as he was now), a quiet orderly man going about his business and not given to foolishness. He would run his washing machine business and try to keep his mind on that. In the evenings he would read the newspapers and keep abreast of the events of the day. “I don’t go on a bat very often. I deserve a little vacation,” he thought rather sadly. * * * * *