lay rotting in the stream.

He went along by her side walking heavily, striving to conceal his
hands. He had scrubbed them carefully before leaving the factory but
they seemed to him like heavy dirty pieces of waste matter hanging at
his side. Their walking together happened but a few times and during one
summer. "It's hot," he said. He never spoke to her of anything but the
weather. "It's hot," he said; "I think it may rain."

She dreamed of the lover who would some time come, a tall fair young
man, a rich man owning houses and lands. The workingman who walked
beside her had nothing to do with her conception of love. She walked
with him, stayed at the office until the others had gone to walk
unobserved with him, because of his eyes, because of the eager thing in
his eyes that was at the same time humble, that bowed down to her. In
his presence there was no danger, could be no danger. He would never
attempt to approach too closely, to touch her with his hands. She was
safe with him.

In his apartment in the evening the man sat under the electric light
with his wife and his mother-in-law. In the next room his two children
were asleep. In a short time his wife would have another child. He had
been with her to a picture show and presently they would get into bed
together.

He would lie awake thinking, would hear the creaking of the springs of a
bed from where, in another room, his mother-in-law was crawling under
the sheets. Life was too intimate. He would lie awake eager,
expectant--expecting what?