they all seem to be, that the world is all wrong.' Then she repeated, 'I 've never thought about life at all before last week.'

"While I was wondering whether I should urge her to tell me what had changed the complexion of her universe, she blurted out, as if she feared her courage might fail:

"I wish I could tell you about it. If I told my husband, he 'd think me crazy; if I told any of my friends, they 'd run around asking, "Oh, have you heard about. Jessica's electrician?" They 'd make a joke or a scandal out of it. May I tell you?' And then as I nodded, 'How funny that I should tell you here!'

"You mean it 's comic to be driven to kitchen-middens to talk?'

"Oh, not only that, but, you see, this thing happened in the kitchen-in my kitchen the other night, and now I'm telling you about it in a vegetable garden!' We smiled at each other then, and I assumed the attentive immobility of your true lis

tener.

"She told her tale without the slightest affectation. No interpolations or explanations or opinions of her own; I always prefer to supply that sort of thing in my telling. Anything that impressed her she repeated as she had heard it, word for word. It was n't, of course, the sort of story that would have satisfied a jury; not explicit or detailed enough, and not especially coherent. It was just real; an accurate report would have left one quite cold. That's the difference between reality and actuality. There's nothing, you 'll admit, so ludicrously stationary as a snap-shot of a person running or walking. That foot thrust forward in the act of taking a step seems turned to stone. Have n't you noticed it? In order to give a sense of real motion the literal image of a moving being won't do. It's the same. way with a tale.

"I got the core of the whole thing from her telling then, but I built it out a bit later after a walk about the little park and a talk with an old telescope-man in Fourteenth Street, a strange old chap with a face as round as a moon and roughly

pitted, like the moon's surface in a photograph.

"I'll give you the tale, if you like, just as I have it now in my head.

"Jessica and her husband had been out walking in the park with their two chows. It was a June evening, about ten o'clock. They had left their door ajar, as they often did in warm weather, and Jessica had run in ahead to telephone. All the servants had gone to bed but one maid, who was dozing in the pantry. Jessica called to her that she would close the doors, and sent her off to bed. Now, the telephone on that floor was in a corner between the dining-room and the basement stairway, very dark and inconvenient, the 'phone on a high shelf, no chair, and close to it. so close that one was always knocking things off it, stood a clothes-tree bulgy with mackintoshes and sweaters and rough coats. Every household, unless it's dominated by a domestic-efficiency expert, has some such corner. One says, 'I really must get at this and do so and so,' but one does n't.

"The wire was busy, and as Jessica waited, she tried to push the clothes-tree farther into the corner. It would n't budge, though she pushed with all her might, and then a voice, very low and very anxious, came from behind it, 'Please don't be frightened!'

"Well, she was frightened, and she stepped back quickly, knocking the telephone off the shelf. It struck her hand as it fell, and she must have uttered a cry, for the voice went on in an urgent whis

from the corner and left her husband to deal with the intruder. She was not venturesome, she had never knowingly taken a risk in her life; but there had been a quality, something, in that whispered appeal that she could not resist. Twice she tried to speak; then came a strange tone, flat, expressionless. She hardly recognized her own voice:

"I am going down into the kitchen; you may come with me. I am not frightened.' And to prove that she was not afraid, she felt for the baluster and started down the narrow stairway, pushing Mell in front of her; and behind her came clumsy, cautious footsteps and loud, anxious breathing. She decided that this was not a sneak-thief.

"Now, Jessica was n't a housekeeper of the old school. She did n't know her way about the kitchen. She had n't a notion where to find the lights. She groped helplessly for a moment, and then said sternly and almost defiantly:

"'Please strike a match!'
"A low voice answered:

"I've a pocket torch. I'll find the switch,' and in an instant the room was flooded with light, and she was facing the intruder across the kitchen table. He stood there quietly, blinking, smiling timidly, clutching his cap-a mere boy, hardly more than two or three and twenty, she thought. He looked so little like a villain that she smiled back at him. "Now, what do you want? Are you hungry?'

"Hungry? No; but you promised your dog a bone.' He stooped and patted Mell, who was sniffing at his legs. 'Can I sit down? I'm played out.'

"Jessica nodded, and went to the icebox to find a bone. Then she stood listening for a moment in the doorway. Every thing was quiet.

"The young man had seated himself in the cook's rocking-chair by the stove.. It had a turkey-red cushion tied in the back of it, and against it his face looked gray. It was a thin, ugly, gentle face, hollowed about the eyes and cheek-bones, and the line from ear to chin was unnaturally

sharp. He had no coat, and his collar was open at the throat; but there was not a suggestion of the tramp about him. He looked like a respectable young mechanic tired after his day's work. Jessica slipped into a chair, and leaned her elbows on the table.

"What were you doing up-stairs? You don't look like a burglar,' she said evenly. "He shook his head.

"I did n't come to steal; I just saw the door open and thought I'd slip in and hide somewheres until I got my bearings. I felt as if the whole town was after me. My wife-she fell off a roof a little while ago. I pushed her off.'

"Jessica held her breath. For several minutes there was no sound in the kitchen but the crunch, crunch of the dog gnawing her bone under the table and a distressed, wheezing sputter in the sink-pipe.

"So this was a murderer, a wife-killer. Could criminals look like this, timid, tired, gentle? They were, she had always thought, a class apart, shifty-eyed, leering, low-browed ruffians. Children and dogs ran from them in a panic. Decent people very rightly locked them out; and here she was talking to one in her own kitchen, not a bit afraid of him! More than that, she found herself saying:

"Oh, you poor soul!' And then as he sat motionless, his head against the redcotton cushion, his eyes closed, she went on, 'Oh, what made you do it?'

"Presently he leaned forward in his chair and began to speak. Of course, under ordinary conditions the boy would have been abashed to find himself alone with this woman of another world, would have stood before her awkwardly, stammering, 'Yes, ma'am; I don't know, ma'am.' Now the violent shock of his tragedy had anesthetized him to almost complete unconsciousness of his surroundings. He was over the border-line, beyond constraint and embarrassment. he talked he relived moments of the brief life of his passionate attachment, his disillusion, his bewilderment, his pain. He revealed himself in snatches as vivid, as detached, as fragmentary as the ramblings

of a man under ether. Some of the things he said meant nothing to Jessica, but she understood that he was an electrician and that, working in some small theater, he had met and adored and married a girl named Ruby. It is easy to picture the type of chorus girl who calls herself Ruby, is n't it? But she had evidently completely dazzled him. He kept repeating:

"I don't know-I don't know what it was made her so wonderful,' and then: 'You know how, when you look at an electric bulb and it goes out, you see it plain after it 's dark,-it fixes itself on your eyeballs somehow,-and just before it fades you see the loop of the wire, like a gilt thread on black. Well, she was like that. When she went out of the room or round a corner I'd see her for a full minute after she 'd gone, and when she said good-by I'd hear good-by, good-by, good-by over and over, sort of like an echo getting fainter and fainter-hear it with my ears, mind you, not imagination. What was it, do you suppose, made her like that?'

"Jessica said something feeble about personality, but he did not hear her. He

went on:

"We had a nice little place-three rooms. I fixed it all up before we got married. She loved red, and I bought a lot of red cushions and a Morris chair with a red-plush cover. I read somewheres in the paper that electricity had contributed more to human happiness than anything else in civilization. I told her I'd make electricity do her work for her, so she'd have it easy. I ran wires all over the place, a reading-light by the sofa, and hair-curling tongs and electric irons, and a neat little toaster for the diningroom table, a vacuum-sweeper, too; and at Christmas I fixed up a little tree with colored bulbs on it. I thought she 'd think it was fine, housekeeping like that. She said she 'd rather live in a boardinghouse and have people to talk to; I'm not much of a talker. Well, I could n't afford that. She knew I could n't.

"My! she was the prettiest thing ever created. I could have sat and looked at her all day long without saying a word.

She must have thought I was ugly as sin; she never looked at me.

"When it was hot I'd take a couple of chairs and a cushion up to the roof, and I'd fix some lemonade for her or maybe I'd go out and get a pitcher of beer. She 'd rock and rock faster and faster and make the tin roof crackle and snap. You could see Broadway blazing off to the west, and she 'd stare at the lights. I'd sit back and look up at the sky-lights up there worth watching. When I thought what a job it was to build and keep going enough of a plant to light New York, why I had a lot of respect for the One who managed that great old plant up there. It's a great old plant,' he repeated, his eyes fixed on the drop-light over the kitchen table, as if it, too, were a tiny, an infinitesimal part of the solar system. And after a moment of silence he brought out bitterly, 'There she 'd sit rocking and humming to herself, and whenever I'd ask her a question, she 'd give me a lie.

"She liked to go to the movies in Fourteenth Street. There was an old fellow on the street corner had a telescope. Every time we'd go down I'd slip out and have a look at the stars. Five cents a look he charged; he 'd talk just like a storekeeper, as if the stars were his to sell.

"""Good evening, sir, what will you have to-night? Venus, that lovely luminary, is not with us, but we have Jupiter, as usual. I suppose you would not care to have a look at Mars? He's not so showy through this telescope, but very nice and homelike. No? Well, here is Jupiter; this belted monarch of the skies has four attendant moons." Such a line of talk you never heard.

"Sometimes Ruby 'd go out at night with friends, and I'd walk down there. and listen to the old chap by the hour. He certainly was hipped on Mars. Knew all about life there; said the people were enormous, but that an elephant there would jump as dainty as a gazelle, and, the gravity being so much less, they could dig a canal as easy as a squirrel would dig a hole to hide a nut; and everything being

so slow and light, if a man fell off a roof in Mars, he 'd just sort of flutter down like a bit of paper. Even knew how long it takes water to boil up there. Did you ever?' He seemed lost in wonder at this astonishing atom of information, then he added: 'I myself did n't want to think about the stars like worlds. If I thought of 'em as lights, I got a much clearer idea of the whole system and the One who 's running it.' He stiffened in his chair and looked again at the drop-light as if it were a symbol of some unimaginable force.

"The dog, having finished her bone, came out from under the table, shook herself, and trotted out into the hallway. Somewhere in an adjoining house a bell began to ring. The man got to his feet painfully as if every muscle was cramped, and looked about the kitchen, seeing it for the first time.

"Well, I got to clear out,' he said slowly; 'I don't know where to go, what to do. I suppose I could make an end to myself; perhaps that 's the thing to do. I don't seem to have the heart to find a way, but I suppose right here in this room there are things I could use.' He turned to a shelf in a corner by the stove and read aloud the labels on a row of jars: 'Split peas, beans, rice, lentils, barley, vermicelli.' Jessica wondered fearfully if he would find some deadly poison there on her pantry shelves. She seemed somehow aware of death as a tangible presence in the room, and she felt a sudden chill stronger than the icy breath that had enveloped her when she opened the doors. of the refrigerator to look for a bone for her dog.

"You must n't do that-you must not!' she urged breathlessly, and she ran over to him, put her hand on his arm, tugged at his sleeve, forced him to face her. It is n't necessary, it is n't right! You 're good. You must go away. Nobody saw this thing; they 'll think it was entirely accidental.'

"He shook his head.

""There was the janitor, a sneaky Swede; I did n't like the way he looked at Ruby. I told him I'd wring his

"Very early the next morning she went out and peered through the park railings'" stringy neck for him if he laid eyes on her again. I think he was up there to