Even at his desk with the clatter of typewriters in
his ears and the piles of letters demanding his attention, his mind
slipped back to the days of his courtship with Sue and to those days in
the north woods when life had beat strong within him, and every young,
wild thing, every new growth renewed the dream that filled his being.
Sometimes on the street, or walking in the park with Sue, the cries of
children at play cut across the sombre dulness of his mind and he shrank
from the sound and a kind of bitter resentment took possession of him.
When he looked covertly at Sue she talked of other things, apparently
unconscious of his thoughts.
Then a new phase of life presented itself. To his surprise he found
himself looking with more than passing interest at women in the streets,
and an old hunger for the companionship of strange women came back to him,
in some way coarsened and materialised. One evening at the theatre a
woman, a friend of Sue's and the childless wife of a business friend of
his own, sat beside him. In the darkness of the playhouse her shoulder
nestled down against his. In the excitement of a crisis on the stage her
hand slipped into his and her fingers clutched and held his fingers.
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