under the spell. He waited in silence. The voice carried him far away
somewhere, into forests, along the edges of swamps. There was nothing
very definite about his thinking. He would have given a good deal to be
able to be definite.

He went inside the house. "Well, here I am," his mind seemed to say,
"here I am. This is my house, these are my children."

He looked at his wife Winifred. She had grown a little plump since
their marriage. "Perhaps it is the mother in her coming out, she has
had three children," he thought.

The crooning old negro woman went away, taking the youngest child with
her. He and Winifred held a fragmentary conversation. "Have you been
well to-day, dear?" she asked. "Yes," he answered.

If the two older children were intent on their play his chain of
thought was not broken. His wife never broke it as the children did
when they came running to pull and tear at him. Throughout the early
evening, after the children went to bed, the surface of the shell of
him was not broken at all. A brother college professor and his wife
came in or he and Winifred went to a neighbor's house. There was talk.
Even when he and Winifred were alone together in the house there was
talk. "The shutters are becoming loose," she said. The house was an old
one and had green shutters. They were continually coming loose and at
night blew back and forth on their hinges making a loud banging noise.

Hugh made some remark. He said he would see a carpenter about the
shutters. Then his mind began playing away, out of his wife's presence,
out of the house, in another sphere. "I am a house and my shutters are