As would be natural under such circumstances, he tried to control his
thoughts, but when he sat by the window and was wide awake a most
unexpected and humiliating thing happened. The night was clear and
fine. There was a moon. He wanted to dream of the woman who was to be
his wife, to think out lines for noble poems or make plans that would
affect his career. Much to his surprise his mind refused to do anything
of the sort.

At a corner of the street where he lived there was a small cigar store
and newspaper stand run by a fat man of forty and his wife, a small
active woman with bright grey eyes. In the morning he stopped there to
buy a paper before going down to the city. Sometimes he saw only the
fat man, but often the man had disappeared and the woman waited on him.
She was, as he assured me at least twenty times in telling me his tale,
a very ordinary person with nothing special or notable about her, but
for some reason he could not explain, being in her presence stirred him
profoundly. During that week in the midst of his distraction she was
the only person he knew who stood out clear and distinct in his mind.
When he wanted so much to think noble thoughts he could think only of
her. Before he knew what was happening his imagination had taken hold
of the notion of having a love affair with the woman.

"I could not understand myself," he declared, in telling me the story.
"At night, when the city was quiet and when I should have been asleep,
I thought about her all the time. After two or three days of that sort
of thing the consciousness of her got into my daytime thoughts. I was
terribly muddled. When I went to see the woman who is now my wife I
found that my love for her was in no way affected by my vagrant
thoughts. There was but one woman in the world I wanted to live with
and to be my comrade in undertaking to improve my own character and my