imponderable data. Then he took a chair to the window and sat down. She was
very real to him, this woman, and compelling, with her silences, her broken
phrases. Rarely, very rarely before in his life, had he had this experience
of intimacy without foreknowledge, without background--the sense of dealing
with a human soul nakedly.

"Will you come now?"

Mrs. Preston had returned and held the stair-door open for him. Sommers
looked at her searchingly, curious to find where this power lay. Her face
had grown white and set. The features and the figure were those of a large
woman. Her hair, bronzed in the sunlight as he remembered, was dark in the
gloom of this room. The plain, symmetrical arrangement of the hair above
the large brow and features made her seem older than she was. The deep-set
eyes, the quivering lips, and the thin nostrils gave life to the passive,
restrained face. The passions of her life lay just beneath the surface of
flesh.

"He is very talkative, and wanders--"

The doctor nodded and followed her up the steep stairs, which were closed
at the head by a stout door. The upper story was divided about equally into
two rooms. The east room, to which Mrs. Preston opened the door, was
plainly furnished, yet in comparison with the room below it seemed almost
luxurious. Two windows gave a clear view above the little oak copse, the
lines of empty freight cars on the siding, and a mile of low meadow that
lay between the cottage and the fringe of settlement along the lake.
Through another window at the north the bleak prospect of Stoney Island
Avenue could be seen, flanked on one side by a huge sign over a saloon.
Near this window on a lounge lay the patient.