The face comes into my mind and goes out--the face floats in my mind.
The pen has fallen from my fingers. The house is silent. The eyes of
the floating face are turned away from me.

My wife is a girl who came here to this town from another town in the
state of Ohio. We keep a servant but my wife often sweeps the floors
and she sometimes makes the bed in which we sleep together. We sit
together in the evening but I do not know her. I cannot shake myself
out of myself. I wear a brown coat and I cannot come out of my coat. I
cannot come out of myself. My wife is very gentle and she speaks softly
but she cannot come out of herself.

My wife has gone out of the house. She does not know that I know every
little thought of her life. I know what she thought when she was a
child and walked in the streets of an Ohio town. I have heard the
voices of her mind. I have heard the little voices. I heard the voice
of fear crying when she was first overtaken with passion and crawled
into my arms. Again I heard the voices of fear when her lips said words
of courage to me as we sat together on the first evening after we were
married and moved into this house.

It would be strange if I could sit here, as I am doing now, while my
own face floated across the picture made by the yellow house and the
window. It would be strange and beautiful if I could meet my wife, come
into her presence.

The woman whose face floated across my picture just now knows nothing
of me. I know nothing of her. She has gone off, along a street. The
voices of her mind are talking. I am here in this room, as alone as
ever any man God made.