that when a man is put behind iron bars he is in prison. Marriage was
marriage to her.

It was that to her husband Hugh Walker, too, as he found out. Still he
didn't understand. It might have been better had he understood, then he
might at least have found himself. He didn't. After his marriage five
or six years passed like shadows of wind blown trees playing on a wall.
He was in a drugged, silent state. In the morning and evening every day
he saw his wife. Occasionally something happened within him and he
kissed her. Three children were born. He taught mathematics in the
little college at Union Valley, Illinois, and waited.

For what? He began to ask himself that question. It came to him at
first faintly like an echo. Then it became an insistent question. "I
want answering," the question seemed to say. "Stop fooling along. Give
your attention to me."

Hugh walked through the streets of the Illinois town. "Well, I'm
married. I have children," he muttered.

He went home to his own house. He did not have to live within his
income from the little college, and so the house was rather large and
comfortably furnished. There was a negro woman who took care of the
children and another who cooked and did the housework. One of the women
was in the habit of crooning low soft negro songs. Sometimes Hugh
stopped at the house door and listened. He could see through the glass
in the door into the room where his family was gathered. Two children
played with blocks on the floor. His wife sat sewing. The old negress
sat in a rocking chair with his youngest child, a baby, in her arms.
The whole room seemed under the spell of the crooning voice. Hugh fell